


Where Light and Dark Meet

by squirenonny



Series: The Fallen [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Fantasy AU, Gender-Neutral Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, Intersex Allura, Keith is a crow during the day, Lance has Vitiligo, Lance is a cat at night, M/M, Nobody knows what they're doing, Some mild body horror when it comes to the transformation scenes, Trans Lance (Voltron), nonbinary pidge, there's a prophecy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-08
Updated: 2017-11-08
Packaged: 2019-01-30 23:08:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 34,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12663330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/squirenonny/pseuds/squirenonny
Summary: The Fallen One arises:A captive star yearning for the heavens from which it was stolen...So begins the Prophecy of the Fallen Star, which speaks of the one who will save the kingdom from Haggar’s curse. Lance, Keith, and their friends are summoned to get in touch with Allura, the deposed princess of Altea, who is widely believed to be the Fallen Star from the prophecy.But things aren't going to be quite so simple. Lance was cursed to become a cat at night; Keith spends his days as a crow. They both have a role to play in the coming battle, and they're going to have to learn to trust each other--but how can they when they only ever meet in the fleeting moments at twilight when they both are human?





	1. A Captive Star

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Pechat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pechat/gifts).



> Written for Pechat. ([See note on Tumblr.](http://squirenonny.tumblr.com/post/167254299439/where-light-and-dark-meet))

Lance streaked across the rooftops, paws drumming an easy rhythm on the clay tiles. Somewhere behind him— _far_ behind him, by now—was a perplexed and probably pissed off shop keeper. Lance liked to imagine the man running out into the street, shaking his fist at the sky and cursing the cats that roamed the city at night.

He couldn’t know, of course, that _this_ cat was more than just a stray. That it had been no accident that Lance had wandered into the shop that night, ignoring the potion that had been sprinkled around the doors and windows. It smelled bad, big deal. (Okay, “bad” was an understatement; his nose was _still_ burning from that assault on the senses. But he could put up with a nasty odor for a good cause.)

The only real problem had been the window latch, his lack of thumbs catching him up, but a bit of patience and the forethought to practice, and he’d been through like a thread through a needle.

The first hint of dawn fizzled at the horizon—just the faintest smudge of gray muting the diamond glow of the stars, but it was a reminder that he ought to be heading home. The transformation had caught him on a rooftop once, and getting down as a human was considerably more difficult than it was with nimble paws, a tail for balance, and only a fraction of his normal body weight.

He paused on peak over a dormer window, set down the small pouch he’d stolen from the shop, and stared out over the city streets. Nocturne City was just beginning to wake for the day, a few people scurrying about, swathed in cloaks and cowls. Smoke rose from chimneys around the city, and the smell of baking bread simmered down in the warm crevasses between buildings. Somewhere far away, a dog barked and a quiet, instinctual voice inside Lance made him shiver, skin prickling as all his fur stood on end.

There was a certain beauty to the city when seen from this angle. High above the stink of the sewers and the shoving crowds of busy streets, away from grumpy masters and stoic knights and the drag of hard-beds-thin-shoes-short-days and always more bills to pay—way up here, everything was quiet. It was just him and the night, a companion on his most daring adventures, the ones he only risked when Hunk was sound asleep and something inside him burned with the need to be out here, to be moving.

There were worse curses, he figured, than spending half your life as a cat.

A cool wind ruffled his fur, slipping down into his ear like ice, and he shuddered, his ear twitching frantically in an effort to keep the wind out. It was a strange sensation, having ears that moved—and so often without his go-ahead. Like having a squirming baby strapped to his head, waving its hands around at inopportune moments. It wasn’t as bad now as it had been when the curse had first been set, nearly a year ago, but the fact that it still sometimes caught him by surprise made him wonder whether he was doomed to spend the rest of his life occasionally being surprised by his own body.

Heaving a sigh that felt too big for this body, he picked up his loot and got moving again, leaping the narrow gap over the next alley before picking his way down the sloped roofs and balconies to where a covered cubby for trash bins gave him easy access to the ground.

A year ago, the city had seemed so alien to him—all crushing hooves and careless feet and cold, wet, impassable streets. He’d spent those early nights at home, curled up on Hunk’s warm chest, the sound of his own purring lulling him to sleep.

The streets were still a terror, to be honest. Too many big, oblivious things that could crush him without a thought. Too much noise, too many smells. When he was down there, he stuck to shadows and narrow gaps, sprinting across open ground only when he was sure it was safe. More and more, he took to the roofs, building himself a three-dimensional map of the city, until he knew the best way to get from the loft he shared with Hunk to anywhere else in the city.

He sprinted across the street now, skin crawling as a cart drawn by a mule rounded the far-off corner. Even from a distance, the sound of hooves on cobbles made him nervous, and he scampered up the front steps of the shop, leaped up onto the post box, from there to the trellis over the neighbor’s house, and then onto the thin ledge that ran around the second floor of the bookseller’s where he and Hunk lived.

The window was open, as it usually was. Hunk might worry when Lance went out alone at night, but he was too soft to keep Lance penned up inside when his adventurous spirit reared its head.

Lance slipped inside now, leaving his pouch on the desk before he dropped to the floor and crossed to the low, lumpy bed. Hunk was still asleep, sprawled out on his stomach with one leg poking out from underneath the covers. Lance jumped up beside him, his whole body shivering with a contented purr as he curled up against the hollow between Hunk’s arm and his side. It wouldn’t be long now; he could feel the aches in his bones that warned of an impending transformation.

The changing was always the worst—especially in the morning. At night, he lost some of his mental acuity, the pain dulled to something distant as his mind tried to fit itself into a cat’s intelligence, and when the transformation was complete he usually slept off the last of the aches. In the morning, he didn’t have that luxury. An hour from now, he would have to be up and ready to deal with life like a normal person, however much he wanted to hold onto the warm apathy of the night.

Hunk said the transformation to human must hurt less than the other way around, because apparently cat-Lance yowled like a dying thing when the pain reached its peak, no matter how hard Lance fought to remain silent. He always lost himself a little bit when the cat’s mind first asserted itself.

Hunk woke just as it started. Lance was never entirely sure if that was chance, or if the first shudder of pain was enough to rouse him, or if a year of the same routine had ingrained in him the need to be up at the exact moment the sun crossed the horizon. Hell, maybe he set a waking spell for himself every night.

Whatever the case, Lance was grateful. He shuddered, a pitiful sound escaping him as the curse sunk in its claws—and then there was a hand between his shoulder blades, rubbing the loose skin around his neck.

“You’re okay, Lance,” Hunk said, his voice still slurred with sleep. He’d propped himself up on one elbow, pulling Lance against his chest and continuing to rub. “I’ve got you. Just keep breathing.”

It wasn’t that Lance needed the reminder. He’d done this often enough to know that tensing made it worse and that he had a tendency to hold his breath, which didn’t do anyone any good unless he wanted to make Hunk think that he’d died (never a pretty thing.) He knew it was all a matter of patience. Survive the initial throes, and things got better.

If there was one upside to the transformation, it was that he was never aware enough of himself to track the changes. There was the tingling skin and bone-deep ache, and then there was pain and nausea. At some point the feral yowls became something more human—he thought that happened before his vocal cords actually changed, though maybe that was just the delirium talking, but there was definitely a change, and it brought with it a change in Hunk’s soothing monologue.

The pain began to ease soon after, and Lance bit down on the last of his moans of pain, curling in on himself as Hunk shifted, giving him more room. His hand never left Lance’s back, the ceaseless motion giving him an anchor that wasn’t the all-over _wrongness_ of his curse.

“Is it over?” Hunk asked, after Lance had been still for what seemed an impossibly long time. Sweat slicked his skin, already chilling him in the morning air, and he burrowed into Hunk’s chest with an unhappy grunt. “I’ll take that as a yes.”

Lance went boneless, letting himself be flopped this way and that as Hunk sat up to arrange the blanket over them both. Lance kept his eyes closed, partially because he wanted to go back to sleep until the pain passed, but mostly because there were still tears prickling at his eyes and he had to work not to let them fall.

“I got the feld dust you needed,” Lance muttered into Hunk’s shirt. He gestured in the vague direction of the window, identifiable by the cold wind entering through the open shutter. “On the desk.”

Hunk breathed out through his nose, his hand going momentarily still on Lance’s back. “Lance...”

“Don’t worry about it,” he said, before Hunk could ask where he’d gotten it. “You needed it, and now you have it.”

“Which means you stole it.” Hunk sighed.

Lance said nothing.

“You know, it wouldn’t be half as bad if you’d just steal the things I need to undo your curse.”

Lance pulled back, pouting at him. “To _try_ to undo my curse,” he corrected. “We don’t even know if any of your ideas would help.”

Hunk’s gaze slid to the open window. He wouldn’t say it, but Lance knew what he was thinking. Lance never should have gotten cursed in the first place. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t _right._ And however many times Lance told him he didn’t want Hunk or Pidge wasting time and money on futile cures, they never stopped spinning theories.

Thing was, Hunk only ever saw the worst parts of the curse. He didn’t see Lance at night, out in the city, where it was just him and the moon and the hush of a city sleeping.

“Speaking of your curse...”

Lance groaned, rolling over and swinging his aching legs off the bed. “No.”

“We have to talk about this sometime.”

Lance shot him a pointed look. “Do we? Do we really?” He stood, breath hissing out of him, and crossed to the tap in the corner, wetting a cloth and using it to wipe the sweat from his skin. He shrugged out of his shirt, and the weak sunlight caught on the patches of pale, unpigmented skin dotting the length of his right arm. He’d had them nearly as long as he could remember, a snowy constellation that bleached his brown skin to a pale pink. They trailed from the back of his hand up his arm and down one shoulder blade. He remembered a fuzzy day when he was much smaller and he tried to measure the constellations. They’d been smaller then, still growing, and he’d asked his mother what it meant.

 _A gift of the stars,_ she’d said once, _telling you they’re watching._

 _A kiss of snow,_ she’d said another time, _reminding you to have fun._

 _A story,_ she’d said the last time he asked, _because yours is a story no one else can tell._

Tossing the wet rag back into the basin, Lance grabbed a towel and dried off, then pulled on a clean shirt. “So,” he said. “What horrors do you suppose Master Harwell has in store for us today?”

“None,” said Hunk. “She saw the summons, Lance. She knows we’re not coming in.”

Lance’s heart fluttered, and he tugged on a waistcoat, pointedly not looking in Hunk’s direction. “We haven’t accepted the summons. Technically.” Silence was his only answer, and the bottom dropped out of Lance’s stomach. “I’m not getting involved in a gods-damned prophecy, Hunk. My life is complicated enough with the whole cat thing.”

“And if we do this, you might not have to _deal_ with the ‘cat thing’ anymore,” Hunk insisted. “They promised us a boon.”

Lance groaned. They’d had this argument before. Several times per day, every day since the summons had arrived. It was suitably dramatic for the royal diviners— _The eclipse approaches! Answer the call to save your kingdom!_ Lance had no doubt the little scroll would have come packaged with a fanfare and streamers if anyone had figured out a way to do that.

Hunk was going to win this argument. Hunk knew it, and so did Lance. It wasn’t that Hunk was right, because there was no world where a life-or-death race to find the Fallen Star before the eclipse came and destroyed the city was worth the vague promise of the removal of what was, at best, a slight inconvenience.

It was that this was a summons from the Crown—the same Crown that had declared it justice that Lance spend each night as a cat, the same Crown that had arranged a new apprenticeship for him immediately after convicting him of theft and misuse of magical components.

The Crown was nothing if not fair (if only by its own definition), but it always got its way.

Sighing, Lance rolled his head back and scowled at the ceiling. “ _Fine._ Is Pidge meeting us there?”

“Yep.” Hunk flung his arms around Lance’s shoulders, beaming. “Just you wait, Lance. Things are finally going to turn around for you.”

 _Yeah,_ Lance thought, letting Hunk drag him out of their loft. _Somehow, I doubt it._

* * *

“You actually let someone stuff you into that monstrosity?” Lance asked, fighting down a grin at the sight of the mound of green fabric slumped against the wall outside the parlor in the Summer Palace. Pidge looked up at him, their eyes burning a silent warning.

“You’re going to the palace, milady,” they said, pitching their voice high in what Lance could only guess was a slightly unfair impression of their latest maid. Lance had never met the woman, as he’d never met the last three. Pidge had a way of scaring them off faster than a cat chasing rats. Pidge pushed off the wall, spreading their voluminous skirt wide. “You’ve got to look _presentable_ , milady. Wouldn’t be half as bad without the crinoline and lace.”

Hunk gave them a sympathetic grimace as they tugged at their lacy neckline and swatted the skirt as it tried to trip them up. “Think you can get away with a change of clothes once we’re done with the stuffy palace business?” he asked.

“Oh, I have no doubt I can do that,” they said. “Do you know who’s in charge of this little mission?”

Lance furrowed his brow. “I was hoping it was you,” he admitted. “Being a noble and all.”

With a snort, they crossed to the door marked with a violet sash and rapped their knuckles against the door. “Yeah. Right.” They flashed him a grin. “You’re not getting off that easy, tomcat.”

A muffled voice called for them to enter, and Pidge pushed opened the door, leading Lance and Hunk through into a small, cozy parlor. The Summer Palace wasn’t really much of a palace at all—more of a receiving area for distinguished guests. The richest of the rich got to meet with the king and queen in the High Palace, whose foundations were carved into the stone of the jagged cliffs that sheltered Nocturne City.

Far from the gilded windows, crystal chandeliers, and marble floors of the High Palace, the Summer Palace was simply and sturdily built. The Crown had brought in only the finest craftsmen, of course, but they worked in oak and granite and brass, crafting a palace in miniature to sate the merchants, alchemists, and civilian knights whose lives brought them into the orbit of the royal family.

Pidge might have been permitted to visit the High Palace, had they kept different company. They were a minor noble—but they _were_ a noble. Their father and brother were off supporting the war efforts as alchemists and tacticians, and their mother mingled with the wives of dukes and barons.

Pidge… not so much. People liked to blame their erratic behavior, peculiar hobbies, and uncouth habits on Lance and Hunk’s influence, but Lance happened to know that Pidge had started themself on that particular trajectory _well_ before they snuck into an alchemy lesson with the Mule. (So Pidge called Master Els, both because he was stubborn to the point of vexation and because he was an ass, plain and simple.)

And, well. Where the Holts were concerned, the family’s younger child could hardly have been denied an audience in the High Palace, but in _this—_ summoned along with two commoners for their combined skill in alchemy…

It was perhaps slightly insulting that Pidge was to be received here, no doubt by someone common-born, but it was hardly surprising.

For their part, Pidge seemed unimpressed with the subtle insult. They glided through the parlor door with as much poise as Lance had ever seen them employ, skirted the low sofa that took up half the plush rug, and dropped heavily into an armchair by the hearth, which blazed with flames tinged green with magic.

The man standing by the hearth, his broad shoulders exaggerated by the gleaming armor of the Royal Garrison, turned toward them, one dark eyebrow arched high. “Tell me how you _really_ feel.”

Lance froze halfway to the sofa, his mind suddenly racing outward to the ink stain on the cuff of his shirt; to the stubborn tufts of hair sticking up at the back of his head, which he hadn’t bothered to tame this morning; to the pants that were just a bit too short after his last growth spurt and the waistcoat with its worn seams and tarnished buttons.

“You didn’t tell me _Captain Shirogane_ was going to be here,” he hissed. Hunk just smiled, damn him.

Lance frantically reached up to smooth his hair, simultaneously tugging at his pants in an effort to make himself more presentable, but the flurry of activity only drew Shirogane’s gaze toward him. He was younger than Lance would have expected, though it had only been a year since he’d been raised to knighthood—one of the youngest to obtain the rank in recent years, and common-born to boot.

The streak of white through his black hair aged him, as did the scar across his face—both marks of the fight against enemy sorcerers that had cost him his sword arm. Lance had heard only fragments of the story. He knew Shirogane had been recalled from the war, but he hadn’t realized… he never would have thought that…

“Oh,” Pidge said, craning their head to peer at Lance and Hunk, a mischievous light in their eyes. “Right. Guys, this is Shiro. He’s an old friend of the family.”

“He’s—what?” Lance choked out.

Shiro gave Pidge a quelling look as they hooked their feet over the edge of the chair. They’d already kicked off their shoes, and their stockinged feet poked out from the up-turned cone of their skirts. It was a patently undignified display, but Shirogane—Shiro—only sighed and rested his hand on their short, untamed hair for a moment as he came to greet Lance and Hunk.

“Takashi Shirogane,” he said, extending his hand. Lance started to extend his right hand in response before realizing his mistake and correcting. “Call me Shiro.”

“Lance. And this is Hunk.” Lance paused. “How do you know Pidge?”

Shiro smiled. “Their father and brother were deployed with my company in the war. I heard a great many stories about the little devil waiting for them at home, and Lady Holt was kind enough to give me rooms when I returned to the city after my… injuries.”

“He’s moved out since then,” Pidge put in. “I don’t think he can handle my ingenuity.”

“I moved out so I could stay active in the Garrison,” he said. “Your brother desensitized me to the Holt ‘ingenuity.’”

Pidge snorted. “Matt? Please, he’s a baby troublemaker. He’s got nothing on me.”

Shiro rolled his eyes, but he was smiling a smile that put Lance’s nerves at ease. “Please,” he said, gesturing to the sofa. “Why don’t you take a seat? We have a lot to discuss, and time is running short.”

“Right.” Pidge flipped around, letting their feet drop to the ground. For just an instant as they turned toward Lance, he spotted a pair of trousers underneath all the petticoats—no doubt the dress would be gone the instant they left the palace, and Pidge would be back to the boyish look Lance was accustomed to. They wore skirts occasionally—simple ones that hung loose about their legs—but not after they’d been coerced into a getup like this one. “The eclipse is coming up soon.”

“Less than a week,” Shiro said, taking a seat in the other armchair. He rested his elbow on his knees, his hand reaching up to touch the sleeve covering his right arm, which ended a few inches below the elbow. Catching himself, he let his hand dropped. “I trust you’re all familiar with the prophecy?”

“Eh.” Lance wiggled his hand. “In the abstract?”

Hunk sighed the sort of sigh that said, _Really, Lance? Now?_ “We know _of_ it. Something about a disaster that’s going to befall the city during the eclipse, and… something about a fallen star that’ll save us? I know I heard the whole thing once, but it’s been a couple years. I don’t remember that much.”

“Same here,” said Pidge. “I’ve read a lot of people’s interpretations, but I’ve been having some trouble getting my hands on the prophecy itself.”

“That’s intentional,” Shiro said. “First of all, it was spoken in an ancient tongue, and translation is… difficult, at best. Add to that the risk of someone trying to pass themselves off as a fake Fallen One, and the royal advisers decided it was best if no one have access to the text of the prophecy except people working on sanctioned research.”

Lance raised a finger, halting Shiro’s lecture.

“You have a question?”

“Yeah.” Lance laced his fingers together, tapping his index fingers against his lips. “You said Fallen One. I thought it was Fallen _Star._ ”

Shiro blew out a long breath. “That would be one of the ongoing debates. That particular line doesn’t specify who or what has fallen. Technically _the fallen_ is the most accurate translation. The grammar indicates it’s speaking of a person, but the rest of the stanza makes reference to stars and the sky, which is where the original translation came from.”

“The original translation was generally more flowery than it should have been,” Pidge put in. “Everything I’ve read says that it interpreted lines instead of translating them directly, which makes that translation a poor one to use if you want to actually, you know, _figure it out._ ”

“Exactly.” Shiro leaned back in his chair. “We’ve had scholars looking at this for a long time, but there’s still a lot they don’t have a solid answer for… And the eclipse is a week away. That’s where we come in.”

“Why _us_ , though?” Hunk asked. “We haven’t studied this sort of thing.”

Shiro’s eyes met Hunk’s steadily before turning to Lance and then to Pidge. “No,” he said. “But you three have proven clever, resourceful, and a little bit… loose about the law. The people who know about the philosopher’s stone think quite highly of your initiative.”

Lance snorted. He didn’t have to ask why Shiro had been selected for this team. His skill and cunning had helped him rise through the ranks in the army, attaining positions rarely given to people of his age or social standing. And all that was before he’d stopped the witch Myzax, who had plagued the army for months, undefeated.

Honestly, it was kind of insulting that he’d been lumped in with the three of them, who as far as Lance could tell had been chosen because they were the right blend of sneaky, smart, and expendable.

“Isn’t there supposed to be one more person on this team?” Pidge asked. “I heard there were going to be five of us.”

“That’s right.” Shiro scratched his jaw, an odd expression crossing his face. “We’ll meet up with him later. He’s working on… other issues right now. He’s a sorcerer. Self-taught, but he has a knack for coming up with creative applications of his magical talents.”

Lance blinked twice, crossing his arms. “Uh-huh… So what exactly is our ragtag band of heroes supposed to do?”

Shiro spread his arms wide, shrugging. “We’re going to be pursuing what the researchers have identified as the most promising leads, and seeing if we can follow them to a satisfactory conclusion.”

Pidge nodded. “I mean, I guess that’s a plan. Can we at least hear the prophecy?”

Shiro nodded and began reciting, first in a language Lance didn’t recognize, full of long vowels and soft consonants, the words tumbling over each other like a brook over stones. “The original text,” Shiro explained. “I had to memorize it in case we run across someone who can provide a more accurate translation. This is the general consensus so far:

 _“The Fallen One arises:_  
A captive star yearning for the heavens from which it was stolen  
Unwelcome protection from death preserves it  
Protection, unasked, it gives at its own expense  
With summer’s soul and winter’s mark, it waits:  
A fugitive, a cast-off, a survivor.  
The twilight between sun and moon.

 _Curses unravel and the soul is made free_  
When the night marries the day  
A gift is given, affection won  
When the moon embraces the sun  
The watcher and the watched must be as one

 _When the night consumes the day, so shall life fail_  
Magic's net unraveled, the star in its pride cast down,  
And the innocent pay in blood  
One hope remains: the martyr, for hubris cursed  
Life in payment, life in bounty  
And twilight a new tale begins  
To find she who stole the day.”

Cold dread seeped down Lance’s spine, gathering beneath his skin in pools of ice. Shiro had turned during his recitation to stare into the fire, and Lance took advantage of his distraction to glance frantically toward Hunk, who stared straight ahead but reached out one hand to grip Lance’s forearm. Across the room, Pidge was staring at him openly, their eyes narrowed and darting back and forth, as though reading some unseen text.

Lance licked his lips, trying not to think about the snowy patches across his arms and back or the way the third stanza prickled uncomfortably close to home.

“And… you don’t know who this Fallen One is?” he asked, his voice thin.

Shiro shook himself, then turned around. “Actually, that’s the first lead we’re going to be chasing down.”

“Oh?” Lance coughed, chasing away the squeak that made him sound ten years younger than he actually was. “I mean, oh? And who are we looking for?”

“Allura Leon. You might remember her as Allura of the Lions, Princess of Altea, from before the Galra Empire ousted the royal family.”

Lance blew out a shaky breath, trying to decide whether that was better or worse than the horrifying possibility his brain had immediately jumped to. “So, what, we’ve got a week to find a deposed princess who may or may not still be alive? That sounds doable.”

“Oh, she’s alive,” Shiro said. “In fact, she’s living outside a town not far from Nocturne City.”

Hunk’s eyes widened. “Seriously?”

Pidge nodded. “Altea was one of our strongest allies,” Pidge said. “I didn’t know who the princess was or where she ended up, but it’s pretty common knowledge among the nobility that we helped her escape the fall of her kingdom. Or at the very least, we gave her somewhere to hide.” They paused, smiling wryly. “Why do you think we’ve been at war with the Galra Empire for the last five years?”

Lance cursed. “Okay, so… where is this Fallen Star Princess?”

“Just outside Talero,” Shiro said. “Now, we’re on a tight schedule. Gather what you need for a night on the road and meet me at the western gate in an hour.”

* * *

Lance was freaking out, and not without reason. He’d never been to Talero, only heard of it vaguely as a small-ish town in the general vicinity of Nocturne City. There was nothing there worth visiting, and Lance was neither rich enough nor bored enough to go traveling the countryside.

So he hadn’t _totally_ been thinking about travel time. Shiro had said it would be a long trek, but he’d also said Allura was close, so Lance had figured they’d get to this town late afternoon-ish, talk the princess into helping them decipher the prophecy, spend the night in an inn somewhere Lance could hide his transformation from Shiro and the princess, then go home in the morning.

Great, except for one problem: they hadn’t gotten to Talero in the afternoon. They hadn’t even gotten there in the early evening. They arrived just as the sun was beginning to bleed, the sky painted in warm hues as the heat seeped out of the air. Lance could feel the impending transformation in his bones as they rode into town, Shiro and Pidge astride horses borrowed from the Garrison, Hunk and Lance in the cart that carried their scant supplies.

Lance shivered, clutching at Hunk’s arm as they trundled over rough-cobbled streets. Where were they headed? An inn? Gods, Lance hoped so. It wouldn’t be long now before the transformation started, and he very much would not like an audience for it. Hunk was one thing, but the others? Lance didn’t even like Pidge seeing him in that state, and they’d been in on the secret from the start—one of only a half dozen or so people who knew about Lance’s curse.

It had to stay that way. Shiro was content to leave well enough alone only knowing part of the story, it seemed, but if he found out about this, then the questions would start, and once they started they would never end. And that wasn’t even considering the townsfolk still spotting the streets in the gathering doom.

To Lance’s horror, Shiro didn’t direct them toward an inn, but toward a small park on a hill near the edge of town. They left the horses and cart behind, and Shiro gestured for the others to follow. Lance climbed down from the cart and very nearly collapsed where he stood, a streak of pain shooting through him.

Hunk caught him, whispering an aborted question about how he was doing.

“I can’t— _Hunk,_ ” Lance wheezed. “Can you--?” He gestured weakly toward Shiro. Pidge stood near him, glancing over their shoulder at Lance, expression pained. Lance averted his gaze, looking instead to Hunk, who nodded earnestly.

“I’ll tell him you wanted to look into something and that you’ll meet up with us later.”

Good enough. Lance smiled weakly, then turned and staggered as quickly as he could toward the alleys between the surrounding buildings—houses, mostly, with a general store tucked in between two of the smaller ones.

He was just rounding a corner that would have put the street and all its prying eyes behind him when someone came barreling around the corner toward him. The other person jerked, body going rigid as Lance walked straight into him, his hunched posture winning him a face full of wool coat.

Yelping, Lance stumbled back, cringing as his bones shifted. The other person cursed, clutching his arm as though Lance had somehow wounded him.

“Watch where you’re going,” the other man growled. He was a work of contrasts—dark hair framing a pale face, bright blue eyes shadowed by dark bruises, rough clothes but a fine silver chain around his neck that disappeared beneath the collar of his shirt.

Lance wrinkled his nose. “Sorry, jeez.” He paused, thoughts slow to fall into line. “Wait… Who are you? And what were you doing hiding in an alley?”

The other man was already walking, hands digging into the pockets of his patched coat, and he gave no indication that he had heard Lance’s questions. For just a moment, Lance considered giving chase, demanding answers.

Then another, deeper wave of pain hit, bringing nausea with it, and Lance forgot all about rude strangers lurking around shady alleys. He sprinted around the corner, tucked himself into the shadow behind a trash bin, and let the transformation have its way.

He managed not to scream until he was mostly cat, by some miracle. That would be just what he needed—someone concerned bystander come charging in to help, only to find a grotesque monstrosity, half man, half cat. He’d be lucky if they didn’t bash his head in then and there out of mingled fear and superstition.

The transformation was more intense than it usually was, but it passed more quickly, like a torrent of water cascading through a shattered dam. It left him shaking, exhausted, and all he really wanted to do was curl up and take a nap. But he could smell other creatures in this alley—creatures that probably wouldn’t take kindly to a scrawny stranger encroaching on their territory.

He turned, ready to strike out in search of somewhere safer to nap, and caught a familiar scent. It took a moment to place it, as it always did when his cat nose was picking up on something he’d caught only weakly with his human nose.

The stranger. The man who had bumped into Lance on his way out of this very alley.

There was something unusual about his scent. Not exactly dangerous, but… _powerful._ He smelled like magic.

Lance’s fur stood on end as he followed the trail to the end of the alley and out into the open. It led across the street—and directly into the park where Shiro had taken the others.


	2. The Twilight Between Sun and Moon

Keith appeared, as usual, about five minutes after Shiro began to worry. He shouldn’t have expected any less, but this would have been a good day for Keith to break his habit. Shiro had a week to figure this out, virtually nothing to go on, and Lance had already disappeared without so much as a heads-up. (He could have at least told Hunk _what_ he wanted to check. )

So Shiro was on edge even before the sun went down, narrowly resisting the urge to pace the dirt path that ran the perimeter of a small pond. His hand kept trying to reach for his sword, an impulse born of a year at war. He’d learned to get by with only one hand, but when he was tense he fell back on his training, and when he fell back on his training he forgot for a moment that the last three months had happened.

A footstep crunched on gravel behind him, and he spun, heart in his throat until he recognized Keith standing in the gloom between the trees.

“Sorry I’m late,” Keith said, stepping out into the circle of light cast by Shiro’s lantern, which he’d set on a flat rock by the pond. The sun was fully down by now, the first stars visible through the treetops. Keith tugged at the collar of his dark coat, glancing over his shoulder. “Also I, uh, I seem to have picked up a tagalong.”

Shiro frowned. “What?”

Keith stepped aside, revealing a small calico cat, patterns of deep brown and tawny orange dappling its body. A smattering of stark white that seemed almost to glow in the lantern-light traced a path up its right leg and down its back. It sat down, curling its tail around its front paws.

“Mrrow?”

Hunk made a soft, choked sound, and Shiro turned to find Pidge yanking on his sleeve.

“Ignore him,” they said, grinning toothily. “He just. Really likes cats.”

Hunk stared at them blankly for a moment, and they stomped on his foot, making him yelp, then nod frantically. “Yep,” he squeaked. “I love cats. Loads and loads.”

Shiro stared at them both for a long moment, then turned back to Keith. “Have any trouble getting here?”

“I made it,” Keith said, shrugging. “Can’t ask for much more than that.”

“I suppose you can’t.” Shiro tugged at the hem of his waistcoat, nodding. “All right. Allura lives on the outskirts of town with her uncle.”

Pidge’s hand shot up. “Allura. That’s the--”

“Yes,” Shiro said. “But it’s better for everyone if we pretend not to know, at least while we’re out in public.” Pidge and Hunk nodded, and Shiro reached into his breast pocket, pulling out a sketchy map he’d had one of the researchers in Nocturne City make for him. He dropped to one knee beside the rock on which he’d set the lantern and spread out the map, pinning it down with his right arm so he could trace their patch with the other hand. “Shouldn’t be too far from here, but we’ll want to go in quiet. Allura doesn’t know we’re coming.”

“Wait, we’re going _now_?” Hunk asked. “At night?”

Shiro glanced at the sky. “It’s still early,” he said. “Besides, we don’t have a lot of time to spare. If we talk to her tonight, then we might be able to head back first thing in the morning, hopefully with good news.” He traced the path on his map once more, ingraining it in his mind, then folded the page and slipped it back into his pocket as he stood. “Will Lance be long, do you think?”

Hunk glanced frantically to Pidge, who rolled their eyes.

“It’s impossible to say. He does this sometimes—runs off after strangers, either because they have something of interest or just because he wants to flirt with them.” Keith made a disgusted noise and shot Shiro a look that clearly said, _This is who we have to work with?_ Pidge ignored him. “I’d say its about fifty-fifty he just saw a cute girl, in which case we won’t see him till morning. Aaugh!” The calico, which had been wandering about the clearing, batting at Keith’s coattails and rubbing up against Hunk’s legs, had finally turned its attentions on Pidge. Slinking up onto the bench they’d settled onto, it leaped into their lap, sinking its claws in as Pidge flailed in a mad attempt to shove it off.

Shiro chuckled as the cat finally gave up and slid off of Pidge, recovering from its awkward landing quickly and lashing its tail before it returned to Hunk, who picked it up and tickled it behind the ears. “Look at you, making new friends,”  Shiro said, smiling at Pidge, who stuck out their tongue at him. “ Anyway. I’ll leave word with the coachman in case Lance gets back early, but we can’t afford to wait not knowing when he’ll be back. So unless any of you have anything else you’d like to look into—no? Okay. Then lets go talk to Allura.”

* * *

The cat stuck with them all the way to the edge of town, because clearly it had it out for Keith. Sorry— _he_ had it out for Keith. Hunk had apparently sexed the cat within the first five minutes and seemed oddly insistent that no one call it an  _it_ . Whatever. Keith had bigger things to worry about. Like the headache that had taken a chisel to the inside of his skull ever since he stowed away on the morning cart to  Talero , or the fact that his social circle had just been forcibly expanded from Shiro, whom Keith actually  _knew_ and  _trusted_ , to include three strangers , one of whom couldn’t actually be bothered to show up .

Keith reached up absently and traced the outline of his mother’s pendant beneath his shirt,  trying to recall the wording of the prophecy. Shiro had read it to him last night, but Keith hadn’t been paying much attention. History, riddles,  _prophecies—_ those weren’t his strong suit. What magic he worked he worked on instinct, tossing established spell theory out the window and going with whatever felt right.

Hopefully prophecies worked the same way. (Or maybe not. The first few lines had left a sour taste in his mouth with the way they hit uncomfortably close to home, and every instinct he had was screaming that the prophecy wasn’t anything he wanted to get involved in.)

And yet…

_Curses unravel and the soul is made free._ That was the line that had sunk its teeth into Shiro, the reason he’d wheedled Keith into agreeing to join this asinine quest in the first place. Keith had tried to tell him that it was probably referring to a specific curse—and therefore  _not_ the one that had been placed on Keith on the day of his birth—but Shiro would not be dissuaded. It was a chance, he said, and a chance was more than Keith had ever had before.

He was right. Keith could fight it all he wanted, but it wasn’t chivalry that had brought  him out of Nocturne City on the cart ride from the five hells.

Shiro hadn’t been exaggerating when he said the princess-in-exile lived on the outskirts. Talero wasn’t especially bustling in the heart of it, but what civilization there was dropped away as Keith and the others threaded through narrow streets that slowly transformed into dirt tracks through the rolling hills to the south. Gardens popped up, then turned into something closer to a proper farm, and each house came after a longer stretch of empty darkness.

It was quiet out here, Keith would give it that. He liked the pulse of the city, especially at night when a blanket was cast over the streets, giving every ally an illusion of privacy, but sometimes his soul ached for open skies and a sea of grass. Just him and the world. No people around to pry at his secrets, no petty concerns of food and lodging.

He tilted his head back, tuning out the hushed conversation passing between Hunk and Pidge behind him. The cat, for once giving up on pestering Keith, kept trying to trip them up, and Pidge was threatening him with bodily harm as Hunk tried to talk them down.

The words bled into the darkness as Keith gazed up at the stars. They were clearer out here, away from the city lights and the buildings that choked the sky. Like staring down at the ocean, millions of waves sparkling in the moonlight. Almost, Keith could imagine falling into the sky forever, buoyed on currents of air. You could get lost, up there in the night. Lose yourself and never come down.

It had been ten minutes since they last passed a house when Shiro released a breath he’d been holding. “That’s it,” he whispered, nodding to the road ahead of them.

Keith quickened his pace, drawing even with Shiro. A small cottage, almost invisible in the night, dozed in the shadow of a stand of trees. Low light glowed between the slats of a shutter, and moonlight illuminated the garden out front, guarded by a low picket fence.

“Quaint,” Pidge muttered. “Think they have a pet goat?” Shiro shot them a quelling look, but they just shrugged. “No judgment! I just think they seem like the kind of people who’d have a goat.”

Keith rolled his eyes and picked up the pace, pushing open the gate and stepping onto the cobblestone footpath that led to the cottage door. Something moved in the shadows around him, low to the ground, and he froze, watching from his periphery to try to pinpoint the source.

With a yowl, the cat sprang from his perch on Hunk’s shoulders and streaked into the shrubs, kicking up a racket tha t set Keith’s teeth on edge. The light at the window brightened for a moment as someone peeked out, then went suddenly dark.

“Oh for the— _why_ did we bring that cat?” Keith demanded.

Hunk pressed his index fingers together, looking sheepish. “Because he’s cute and soft?”

“And because we didn’t feel like fighting with him,” Pidge added. They stomped up to the edge of the garden and crouched down, hissing between their teeth. “ _Here_ , kitty, kitty. Get your damn ass back here before I find a dog to sic on you.”

“Pidge,” Shiro said, putting on his _patient_ voice (something Keith had entirely too much experience with). “I don’t think swearing at the cat is going to do anything.”

B ut a moment later,  the  cat came streaking out of the garden, chasing after several smaller shadows that squeaked in fright when they came to Pidge’s leg, swerving to avoid  it . “What the--?” Pidge twisted to follow the small forms, but in doing so they put themself in the path of the cat, overbalanced, and toppled.

Hunk squealed, flailed briefly, and then stilled. “Aww,” he cooed. “They’re mice!”

“Ew!” Pidge cried. “Hunk, don’t _touch_ them! Hey, cat! Get ‘em.”

The cat blinked at them, unimpressed, then flipped his tail and turned to wash his face. Pidge’s face fell. Hunk, meanwhile, was too busy giggling as four small mice skittered across his shoulders, nuzzling at his cheeks before finally settling down in the hollow formed by his cupped hands.

“Where’d you guys come from?” he asked.

Keith pressed his thumb to the space between his eyebrows, where his headache was attempting to make a resurgence. “They’re mice, Hunk. They can’t answer you.”

“Says you.”

Shiro sighed. “Guys...”

Just then, the door opened,  the light from within silhouetting a tall, slender man holding a fireplace poker. “Who’s there?” he demanded in a thinly masked Altean accent. “I feel I should warn you, I have military training and an armory full of weapons in here. You don’t want to pick a fight with me.”

Shiro’s eyes fluttered closed for a moment. Then he put on his most disarming smile and stepped into the light, arms spread wide to show he was unarmed. “We’re sorry, sir. We didn’t mean to surprise you.”

“Surprise me! Ha! It’ll take a lot more than a band of ruffians in the night to surprise _me!_ ”

The smile turned strained. “Of course. We were sent here by the King of Terra. Is it all right if we talk inside?”

The man hesitated, but a voice from within said, “It’s all right, Coran. Let them in.”

“But—Allura.” The man, Coran, swallowed his protests. He narrowed his eyes at the visitors, then grudgingly stepped aside. Shiro let the way in, Keith close on his heels. Pidge and Hunk followed, and the cat only just managed to slip inside before the door closed. He twined around Hunk’s legs and stared up at the mice, no doubt planning his next meal.

A young woman emerged from the back room, her brown skin contrasting starkly against her pure white hair, and Keith felt an electric chill as he realized what the royal researchers were getting at with all their theories about the princess being the star in the prophecy. What was that line? Something about winter’s mark? That hair certainly fit the bill.

The mice—there were four of them, Keith now saw—chittered from their perch in Hunk’s hands, then dropped to the floor, skirted around the cat, who looked like he might pounce at any moment, and climbed the princess’s skirts. They kept going until they reached her shoulders, where they trampled over one another, each pressing successively closer to her ear. She tilted her head, as though she were listening to them, and nodded a few times.

The cat moaned low in its throat, a warning if Keith had ever heard one. The mice fell silent, and Allura turned her attention to the cat. His ears had gone flat against his head, and he dropped low as Allura crouched down and extended her hand toward him. “Well hello there.”

Coran frowned. “Uh… Prin—A-Allura?” His eyes darted toward Shiro and the others, but Shiro only raised a hand in a calming gesture.

“Relax,” he said. “We’re all well aware of her true identity, and I assure you, we mean her no harm. Actually, we came here because of your connection to Altea.”

Allura cocked her head to the side, staring hard at the cat for another moment. The mice squeaked, and she nodded, standing up and giving Shiro her full attention. “Oh?” she said. “If it’s political leverage you’re after, I’m afraid you’re out of luck. I was run out of Altea several years ago.”

“When the Galra Empire invaded,” Shiro said, nodding. “I’m aware. I’ve fought against Zarkon’s armies myself.” Her eyes went to his right arm, the end of which was just visible within his sleeve, and Shiro subtly shifted it behind his back. “Actually, we’re here about another matter entirely. Are you familiar with the Prophecy of the Fallen Star?”

“The one that says your kingdom will be destroyed on the day of the eclipse,” Allura said. “I have a… passing interest in it, yes.”

“Then you already know why we’re here.”

Allura glanced down at the mice on her shoulder. “Do I?”

Shiro hesitated, his gaze sliding to  Coran. “We’ve had scholars studying the prophecy since it was first spoken. They generally agree it has some connection to Altea. You know the one who spoke it was Altean, correct?”

“A sorceress,” Allura said. “Yes. She was in Terra to study your people’s magic, so she escaped Zarkon’s crackdown. So?”

“The second line— _A captive star yearning for the heavens from which it was stolen._ ” Shiro paused. “Altea means ‘of the heavens’ in the old language, doesn’t it?”

Grunting in exasperation, Keith pushed his way forward. “Are you the Fallen One or not? Because if not, we don’t have the time to waste here.”

“ _Keith,_ ” Shiro said, tilting his head back. Behind him, Pidge laughed once in surprise and delight, then cut off quickly.

“Wow, Keith,” Hunk muttered. “Harsh.”

Keith turned, scowling at them both. “What? It’s true. We have a  _week_ . If Princess Allura isn’t the person we’re looking for, we have to start from square one.”

“I’m not a princess.”

Keith snapped his mouth shut, then turned back toward Allura. She’d sat down on the sofa, the mice relocating to her lap, and Coran stood protectively at her shoulder.

“What?” Keith asked.

She met his gaze steadily. “I am not a princess. Not since Zarkon took over.”

“I—Sorry?”

She waved her hand dismissively. “It’s fine. But… you’re right.”

“Allura...” Coran reached out for her, but she held up her hand.

“No, Coran. Can’t you feel it? The fates are shifting tonight.” For just an instant, she looked to Keith, then refocused on the cat sitting at her feet. He stared up at her intently—or at the mice on her lap, anyway. “Fate won’t let us hide what we are for much longer.”

A flicker of intense concentration crossed Coran’s face, but it was gone in an instant. He straightened up, tucking his hands behind his back, and nodded. “Very well. If you think this is for the best.”

“I do.” She stretched out a finger, running it down the smallest mouse’s back. “You are correct in your assumptions. I also believe the prophecy refers to me.”

“You _believe_ it refers to you?” Pidge asked, hopping up on the back of the couch. “You don’t _know_?”

Allura scowled. “They don’t exactly hand out instructional pamphlets when somebody sets out the course of your destiny.”

Keith glanced around, noting various shades of skepticism and cautious hope. Shiro seemed to want to press Allura for details, but he was holding back for some reason. Maybe out of respect for her former station, maybe because he was hoping Allura and all those scholars were right.

Keith wasn’t so optimistic.

“What proof do you have?” he asked, crossing his arms.

Allura looked taken aback. “What proof do  _I_ have? You’re the ones who sought me out!”

“Yeah,” Keith said. “Because you were the only lead we had.” The only lead Shiro was admitting to, anyway, and Keith knew that was purely out of loyalty to Keith. The second Allura cast her identity into doubt, Keith knew they would be having a conversation, and as much as he didn’t want to put his own secrets on display, he wasn’t going to follow this woman into a dead end.

Allura pinched the bridge of her nose. “Very well. You’ve already made the first point—Altea does literally translate to  _Land of the Heavens._ Which would mean the one longing for the heavens stolen from it would be--”

“You,” Hunk said. “Because you were deposed? Oh, uh. Sorry.”

Allura’s face soured momentarily, but she took a deep breath and plastered over it with a smile. “It’s fine.  Moving on—there are three other descriptors of the Star, correct?  _A fugitive, a cast-off, a survivor._ I don’t think I need to elaborate on that point. My homeland was invaded, my family slaughtered, and I was forced to start over in a foreign land.”

“Yeah, well.” Keith slumped back against the wall with a huff, baring his teeth at the cat, which had abandoned Allura to come watch Keith instead. “Those could apply to a lot of people. What about—what was the line? Un—Unwanted protection--”

“Unwelcome protection preserves it,” Allura said, her voice low. “Not many people know this, but if I had my way, I would have died in Altea alongside my father.”

Shiro frowned. “You  _wanted_ to die?”

“I wanted to _fight._ My father wanted me to leave, but I refused. I wanted to remain at his side and aid in the fight against Zarkon.” She paused, smiling as the mice squeaked at her. “My father was a powerful sorcerer. He put me into a magical sleep and ordered Coran to bring me to safety. My father died guarding our retreat.” Allura looked up at Coran, who rested a hand on her hair. “Coran can tell you how furious I was when I awoke. I didn’t ask for his protection, and I certainly did not welcome my father’s sacrifice.”

Keith’s heart was pounding now. He could almost make himself  buy into her theory—almost, except for the wriggling knot in his stomach telling him she was wrong.

“Okay, that’s—that’s sad, and I’m sorry for what happened to you, but the prophecy says _preserves._ Ongoing.”

“You’re arguing grammar with a prophecy?” Pidge asked. They whistled, kicking their legs. “Do _you_ have a degree in Ancient Altean, because if so I think there are some scholars who might light to pick your brain?”

Keith shook his head. “ _What?_ ”

“The prophecy was delivered in Ancient Altean,” Shiro said, resting a hand on Keith’s shoulder. There was a note of exasperation in his voice; he must have explained this before. “There’s considerable debate about the translation, and even over whether it was recorded correctly in the first place.”

Allura leaned forward, a stubborn set to her jaw. “What about my hair?” she demanded. “Winter’s mark.”

“Hasn’t the Altean royal family had white hair for generations?”

“It does seem pretty wintery,” Hunk pointed out. “Like snow.”

Keith groaned in frustration. “Now you’re just  _looking_ for justification!”

Pidge’s feet stilled, their eyes riveted to Keith’s. “What is it with you, anyway? Do you not  _want_ us to figure this out?”

“I don’t want us to jump on the first plausible match we stumble across, only to find out a week from now we were wrong!”

“The twilight between sun and moon.” Allura’s voice was soft but insistent, and Keith’s rage dried up at the sound of it. The words made his heart shiver, and he spun toward her, dreading whatever she was about to say. “In traditional Altean tradition, the sun is depicted as male, the moon as female.”

“It’s the same here,” Shiro said. “What’s you’re point?”

“Well...” Allura’s finger circled one mouse’s head, scratching gently at its chin. She seemed reluctant to speak, but she steeled herself and went on. “That line would seem to imply that the Star exists somewhere between male and female.”

Pidge gasped dramatically, pressing a hand to their chest. “You mean  _I_ was the Star all along?”

Confusion painted Allura’s face. “What?”

“Ignore them,” Hunk said. “Are you saying you’re—um...”

“Intersex,” Allura said. Her eyes sideways, her shoulders hitching toward her shoulders. “Suffice it to say that, biologically speaking, I fall somewhere between the two recognized sexes.”

Hunk frowned, drawing in a breath that reeked of prying questions, but Pidge extended their arm to the side, pressing the back of their hand to his chest.

“She’s right, Hunk,” they said. “I’ve read a few books on intersex conditions. It’s—the research is still pretty spotty, but from what I know it fits the prophecy. And, honestly, Allura doesn’t owe us any details.”

Allura lifted her head, a grateful smile lighting her face. “I understand that each piece seems tenuous, but when you take them all together? I’m sure a great many people fit one or two lines of the prophecy, but who else is going to fit the whole thing?”

Keith caught Shiro looking his way and scowled. “I guess there’s something here,” he said, pretending not to have caught Shiro’s unspoken question. “So what now? What does the rest of the prophecy mean? How are we supposed to stop Zarkon?”

Allura’s face went flat, and she dropped her gaze to the mice. “I don’t know,” she said.

“Allura,” Shiro said, managing to make her name sound like a title. “Would you be willing to come to Nocturne City with us? Perhaps if you talk with our scholars, we may be able to figure it out.”

Allura bit her lip. “I  don’t know  if that’s a good idea… ”

A  horrible sound filled the air,  a metal-on-metal screech  that turned Keith’s skin to ice. He tensed, reaching instinctively for his magic even before the shadows came to life.

Two creatures, so tall their heads brushed the ceiling, limbs sagging and elongated, appeared in the center of the room. They appeared in the time it took Keith to blink, created whole cloth from the shadows at the edges of the room, where the lantern light didn’t reach. Their eyes flickered like candles seen from a distance in the depth of night, and an icy wind swept in together with them.

S hiro cursed, dropping low. “Echoes.” The hand he’d lost in the war reached for his waist and found empty air, and he floundered for a moment, his breath hitching.

Keith stepped into the silence, clutching his mother’s pendant through his shirt and lifting the other hand toward the first shadow. A spurt of crimson flame erupted at the creature’s feet, startling another bone-chilling shriek. This time, Keith could tell that it wasn’t an ordinary sound. It seemed to blossom inside his head, like a thought that raged out of control, and his temples pounded in time with his racing pulse.

“Allura!” Coran cried, wrapping an arm around her and trying to pull her away from the creatures. She resisted, sparks flashing in her palm, and the second Echo swiveled its head toward the light.

Keith shifted, planting himself between Allura and the creatures. “Stay back,” he said, spreading his feet and keeping his hands poised for a casting.

“I can fight,” Allura argued. “Let go of me, Coran.”

“Nope.” Hunk hefted a chair, adding himself to Keith’s human shield. “Sorry, but if you’re really the Star, we can’t risk you getting hurt.”

Allura growled deep in her throat. “I’m not letting anyone else die for me.”

_Crack!_

Keith jumped at the sound, loud enough to leave his ears ringing. Glass shattered, and thick, mist-like shadows poured in through the broken window. Pidge held a  revolver in two hands, a tendril of smoke rising from the barrel. The Echo they’d shot had a hole in it, but  as Keith watched, it closed up, the edges blurring and melting together. The flickering eyes blinked, then refocused on Pidge, who yelped and fired again.

“It’s no good, Pidge,” Shiro said. “Those are Echoes; mundane weapons can’t hurt them.”

Pidge’s head whipped around toward him, and they cursed, lowering their gun as they fumbled at the pockets dotting their belt.

“Okay,” Hunk said, “so what _can_ hurt them?”

“Magic,” Shiro said. He turned to Allura and Coran while Keith conjured another fire beneath the Echo he’d injured before. At the same moment, Allura raised her hand, palm outward, and a fist-sized ball of lightning, blinding white in the low light, shot toward the other creature. She didn’t use spell components that were so integral to Terran magic, and for a brief moment, Keith contemplated the significance of that. He’d always assumed that he only needed his talisman to conjure flames because of some quirk in his nature, but might there be more to the picture?

The answer to that question would have to wait.

“I don’t suppose you have a warded room here?” Shiro asked, backing away as the Echoes advanced.

Coran shook his head. “I’m afraid not.”

Shiro blew out a long breath, extending a hand to herd Pidge away from the fight. “So much for that plan. Echoes are controlled from a distance,” he explained. “It keeps the caster safe, but if you can disrupt their connection… Never mind. Keith--”

He cut off as a spire of ice erupted from the floor where he’d been standing. It split  the sleeve of his coat as he danced back, leaving a thin red line.

“Woah!” Hunk yelled. “They’re casters?”

Shiro shook out his hand, wincing. “Unfortunately. Don’t let them touch you.”

Snarling, Keith summoned his magic, but before he could set the room ablaze, the entire floor turned to ice. Keith leaped backward as fingers of ice grasped at his ankles, but Allura wasn’t quite quick enough. In an instant, the ice wrapped around her legs, rooting her in place, and the scorched Echo—listing to one side, darkness leeching off it like vapor—lunged toward her.

Yowling, the cat appeared from the darkness and leaped from the couch to the Echo’s head , back paws a blur, ears laid flat. His dark fur blended in with the shadows, making the patches  of white  and orange stand out like a beacon. The Echo screamed, hand reaching up to latch onto the cat, which yowled as the Echo flung him across the room.

“No!” Hunk cried, dropping his chair and sprinting to where the cat had fallen. He gathered the cat in his arms, murmuring nervously.

Pidge fumbled with their gun, dumping out the bullets loaded into the chambers. Two of them slipped through their fingers, tinkling as they hit the floorboards. Pidge swore, but ignored them, hastily loading new bullets—and maybe it was Keith’s imagination, but the se bullets seemed to shimmer with an iridescent cast.

Shiro snatched up the shovel from the stand by the fireplace and started hacking at the ice rooting Allura in place while Coran, armed with the poker, kept the Echoes at bay. Keith reached for more flames, but the rapidly dropping temperature in the room made his conjuration sluggish. The flames sputtered and died almost as soon as they took root. Cursing, Keith dug in his belt pouch for shrew’s bones and sage. His other spells weren’t as strong as his fire, but it looked like he didn’t have a choice.

Two gunshots rang out in quick succession, followed by agonized Echo-shrieks. A shimmer of green light rippled outward from fresh holes in the Echoes’ chests, and this time they didn’t heal.

Pidge kept their gun trained on the creatures, breath coming in uneven spurts. “Hey, Hunk, good news!” they called as the screams faded and the Echoes collapsed back into ordinary shadows. “The nullifying bullets actually work.”

Hunk laughed once, but it was a feeble sound. He stood slowly, the cat still cradled in his arms—limp now, and with a hand-shaped patch of frost splayed across his back. “Good, cool, awesome,” Hunk said. “Can we go? If those things found us here, there’s no telling when more will show up.”

Grunting, Shiro shattered the last of the ice holding Allura in place. It was already melting, the temperature climbing back to something normal for a summer night. The furniture still smoked in places, soot blackening the floorboards and the ceiling where Keith’s magic had taken root.

Allura smoothed her hair, bending down to let the scattered mice take refuge on her shoulder. She straightened, looking at Coran. “They may be right.”

He nodded, albeit reluctantly. “All right. Just let me grab a few things.”


	3. The Watcher and the Watched

Keith took the last watch, relieving Hunk two hours before dawn. There had been no disturbances through the night—nor any sign of Lance. Keith’s irritation had burned a steady heat in his gut until he fell asleep after an hour of tossing, but by the time he wok up, it had turned to cold concern. What if something had attacked him in the night? Surely Haggar’s magic couldn’t know he’d come here with the rest of them—but what if it could? What if she’d been watching them all since they left Nocturne City?

“He’s fine,” Hunk said through a yawn when Keith voiced his concern. Keith wasn’t the best at reading people, but his reassurances felt like a lie. The way he shuffled his feet, the crease between his brow… He seemed… tense?

Whatever the case, he left before Keith could pry the truth out of him, ducking back into the room he was sharing with Pidge. They’d taken Lance’s bed when they all got back last night, freeing the center room for Allura, Coran, and the mice, which apparently were very important to the former princess.

A sandpaper meow thick with purrs, greeted Hunk as he entered the room, and Pidge echoed with a soft groan. Keith rolled his eyes as he started pacing the hallway, hoping the motion would clear his lingering fatigue. Pidge hadn’t been lying when they said Hunk liked cats; he’d carried the damn thing all the way from Allura’s cottage, cooing at him all the while. And, sure, Keith felt a little bad that the cat had gotten hurt in the fight against the Echoes, but that was no reason to go adopting it.

Whatever. Hunk could do what he wanted, just as long as he kept the cat out of the cart on the way home.

The night wore on, and the gray predawn light brightened slowly to something warmer. Keith’s skin began to tingle with the impending change. He ignored it as long as he could, counting the steps from the top of the staircase to the window at the end of the hall to give himself something to focus on besides the nagging voice of old magic.

When the light and the magic grew strong enough that he felt as though he might fall out of this skin with his next step, he gave in and knocked on the door of the room he’d shared with Shiro.

Shiro answered at once, already wide awake and dressed for the day. He fumbled with the last of his buttons, frowning as he looked Keith up and down. “You should have woken me sooner.”

Keith just shrugged, his mind miles away. Forming words—a struggle at the best of times—was beyond him now. With a sigh, Shiro waved for him to go.

“I’ll have someone pull the cart up out front as soon as the others are up.”

Keith managed to choke out a curt, _Thanks_ , then turned and started for the stairs. He didn’t quite run, but he scowled at the maid on the stairs when she was too slow to clear his path. The sun hit him as soon as he stepped out of the common room, and he gasped, magic flooding his system. He barely made it to a deserted alley before the transformation took root.

It was over in an instant, and he found himself stumbling on talons unprepared to grapple with cobblestones. His wings flapped frantically in an attempt to steady himself, but he still ended up sprawled across the ground for a long moment, his head trying to straighten itself out.

The first moments were always the worst—head-twisting disorientation as another set of instincts forced its way in. Crows were intelligent birds, and Keith’s crow form was no exception, but it was undeniably  _different_ . Foreign, almost. Every sunrise since he was an infant, he’d turned into a bird, but it still sometimes felt like the crow brought with it another mind entirely.

Sometimes Keith thought the crow might even be aware of its human passenger.

Eventually he gathered himself and picked his way back toward the street. He didn’t venture out yet,  wary of carts or pack animals that might be passing by as the town started its day. Shiro emerged from the inn, ducked into the adjoining stables, and reappeared a moment later. He slowed, glancing around the empty street, and Keith flapped his wings once.

Shiro’s eyes found him, and he nodded almost imperceptibly before disappearing back into the inn. The cart appeared a few minutes later, and Keith waited until the bustle of royal guards and inn staff had loaded the small handful of travel bags before walking out into the street, trying to look inconspicuous. Few people gave crows a second look, except for those who held them to be an omen of good fortune and scattered seed in his path.

There were none of that sort about at this hour, thank the stars, and Keith made it to the cart’s shadow without incident. He hesitated there, familiar panic clawing at his throat. He flapped his wings—an ugly, noisy display that gained him far less altitude than it should have.

But he made do, and soon settled himself in among the luggage.

He had a perfect view of the sky from here, and he watched the pastel hues of the sunrise fade to clear blue. It had been years since he’d last dreamed of flying— really  _flying_ , not the pale imitation he could manage— but he still felt the tug.  _You belong up there_ , the crow said.  _The sky is your home._

Unfortunately, the orphanage that had housed him for the first sixteen years of his life had had some deep-set concerns about a toddler in their charge spending his days flying through the halls, just waiting to break his neck on a door frame. They’d done the only thing they could think of: they’d clipped his wings, effectively grounding him for the better part of his childhood. By the time new feathers grew in, the crow’s instincts had moved on, and he’d lost the flight instinct that was owed him.

He’d tried to  teach himself in the years since, watching other birds in flight and taking more than a few tumbles that had ended in broken bones. And he  _could_ fly—sort of. He didn’t have much in the way of endurance, and gaining altitude was always a struggle, but if he leaped from a rooftop he could glide down, and he’d even once or twice figured out how to catch a thermal rising from sun-baked streets.

But he knew his limits, and flying from  Talero to Nocturne City in a single stretch was  _far_ beyond them. So cart it was. Half a day of incessant rattling and the crow’s metabolism fighting with the human’s motion sickness to make every option a mild form of torture.

Shiro was the first to exit the inn, setting a small pouch of cubed fruit in among the baggage.

“Just in case,” he whispered, giving Keith a knowing look, and Keith fluffed his feathers in indignation. (He still ate some as soon as Shiro turned away to greet Allura and Coran, because he hadn’t had time to grab breakfast before the transformation, and because he knew starting out on an empty stomach would only make the queasiness worse.)

Then they were off, and Keith hunkered down, resigning himself to a long, miserable journey.

* * *

Lance had almost managed to sleep through the morning transformation. Not only because he was exhausted after last night’s fight, but because he’d spent the whole night aching where the Echo had hit him, and next to that the pain of transformation was barely a whisper. Unfortunately, his sleep had been restless, and the shifting of bones dragged him back into the land of the living. He bit down on a moan of pain and pressed closer to Hunk’s side until the curse had run its course.

“You okay?” Hunk asked, rubbing Lance’s arm. He sounded miserable, and Lance didn’t miss the fact that Pidge, curled up in a blanket on the armchair, hadn’t complained once about the rude awakening. They’d mixed him up a minor healing potion last night—not as strong as their usual draughts, but that might have been because he was a cat, and cats couldn’t handle the kinds of magic people could. Still, they hadn’t had to do that.

So Lance forced a smile as he sat up, the muscles in his back tugging uncomfortably. He twisted, and was surprised to find no mark where the Echo had touched him. “Fine,” he said. “What’s next, do you think? We found our Star, so… What, do we just shove her outside when the eclipse stars and hope she negates the curse somehow?”

Pidge shrugged. “We’ll see what the scholars have to say, I guess. Prophetic theory isn’t exactly my realm of expertise, but maybe Allura and Coran have some information that’ll come in handy.”

They didn’t have much more time to wonder about it, as Shiro came knocking at their door just a few short moments after Lance was fully human. He seemed surprised to see Lance when the three of them came tromping down the stairs, but didn’t comment on his “absence” last night, which was just as well. It had taken  Lance long enough to get Keith’s disdain out of his head last night; he didn’t need to be brooding the whole way home, too. (Did Hunk  _have_ to say Lance was off flirting with someone? Never mind that it had been a semi-regular occurrence once upon a time when Lance had the option of staying the night with a stranger.)

Allura and Coran were already outside, Allura seated on the bench at the front of the cart, beside the driver; Coran bent at the waist as he watched the mice scampering around his feet. Allura looked up as they approached, and her eyes went at once to Lance, who flushed.

“Right,” Shiro said. “I suppose you two haven’t met. Lance, this is Allura. Allura—Lance.”

Allura’s smile ticked wider, a knowing glint in her eye—so, no, Lance hadn’t been imagining things last night. She really had seen through the curse, and she really had heard him when he panicked and begged her not to tell the others.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Lance.”

“Uh, yeah,” Lance said. “Right back at ya.”

The mice stopped their scurrying to stare at Lance, heads cocked to the side. They, too, were more than they seemed. Not cursed humans, as far as Lance could tell, but definitely more intelligent than ordinary mice. He’d  _hunted_ ordinary mice before. These ones… well, they didn’t  _talk_ , not really, but  they’d definitely been curious about the magic hanging over him last night.

Shiro glanced between them, then at Coran, who traded looks with Allura before straightening up. “Well, then. Are we all set?”

Lance frowned. “Wait. Where’s Keith?” He realized too late that, so far as Shiro knew, he’d never met Keith. Rubbing the back of his neck, he hastened on. “After everything Hunk told me, I kinda wanted to meet Mr. Grumpy-pants.”

“Woah.” Hunk held up his hands defensively. “I never called him that.”

“Of course not,” Lance said. “That’s my own embellishment.” He raised an eyebrow. “He’s not still sleeping, is he?”

“I sent him on ahead,” Shiro said. “To give the scholars a heads-up about what we found.”

“Oh. Right, of course. I… guess that’s a good idea?” Lance looked at Pidge, who was staring hard at Shiro like he’d said Keith had turned into a cat and didn’t want anyone to know. Lance had to chuckle at the thought. Keith _would_ be a cat. Prickly and haughty and exactly the sort of person who would stare you dead in the eyes as he pushed a glass off the table. (Lance had tried that once. It was surprisingly entertaining.)

T hey were soon off, effectively putting an end to Lance’s questions about Keith.  Lance and Hunk had surrendered the cart to Allura, and Lance found himself  riding beside Coran, who was simultaneously the best and worst person Lance had ever known at using small talk to delay an unpleasant conversation. He  spent the first hour of the journey regaling Lance with tales of his years in Altea’s army, which would have been  suspicious enough if he hadn’t followed it up with twenty minutes imitating bird calls.

“Okay, what is it?” Lance finally asked, cutting off Coran’s impression of a snowy owl.

Coran blinked, looking almost comically guilty. “What is what?”

“Whatever it is you want to talk to me about.” Lance crossed his arms, trying to look irritated and not amused at the way Coran’s eyes widened. “I know you’re working up to something, Coran. Just spit it out.”

To his credit, Coran didn’t deny it. He just guided his horse around a muddy patch in the road with practice ease, gave Lance a peculiar look, and said, “Your curse.”

Lance tensed, instinctively glancing around to see if anyone had overheard. Shiro and Hunk were up front chatting with Allura, much too far away to hear anything going on at the back of their little procession. Pidge was the only one close to Lance and Coran, and they seemed deeply engrossed with trying to read while riding.

Returning his gaze to Coran, Lance narrowed his eyes. “What about it?”

“Allura told me about it. What she’d figured out of it, at any rate.”

“Yeah.” Lance tipped his head back, tracing the path of a quick-moving cloud across the sky. “How much _does_ she know? And how?”

Coran hummed thoughtfully. “She has the gift of insight—something she inherited from her mother, along with  the magic she learned from  her father.  It allows her to… let’s say  _see the truth in things._ ”

“Like the fact that some random cat is actually a human?”

“Like that. Among other things.” Coran tipped his head to the side. “She claims it also allows her to speak with animals. I haven’t been able to figure out if that’s a joke or not.”

L ance smiled, feeble though it was. “Pretty sure she’s telling the truth there. But, okay. What else does she know?”

“She suspects it was a curse,” Coran said. “A punishment of some sort? She wanted me to ask if you might be willing to tell us more. If we knew who cast the curse, and the spell they used, we might be able to undo it.”

An instinctive shiver of hope ran through Lance, and he let his eyes drift back to Allura. She’d inherited her father’s magic, huh? Lance had heard rumors that the king of Altea could undo any enchantment with a swish of his fingers. Was Allura the same?

“Ask me again after the eclipse,” he said, shoving down his irrational hopes. “There are more important things to worry about right now.”

Coran opened his mouth, looking too much like he wanted to protest, so Lance spurred his horse on, closing the distance to the others so Coran would have no choice but to  drop the issue.

Coran would never have believed him, anyway.

* * *

_There was a shelf in Master Els’s shop that he kept locked. Behind the glass, in neat rows of small, opaque vials and porcelain jars, were the most expensive ingredients, like dragon’s bile and extract of moonbeam, and the most dangerous, like arsenic. The ones Lance and his friends weren’t allowed to use—not now, and not for a very long time._

_So of course these were the compounds they needed for their experiment._

_Pidge had been doing some reading. (Funny, how much of their trouble started with a little reading.) Alchemists across the world were hunting for the elusive philosopher’s stone. Opinions differed on what the stone would actually do—some held that the ancient theories of turning lead into gold were accurate, others said it was a potent antitoxin, or a limitless source of power._

_Some even said the philosopher’s stone was a weapon—the only weapon that could defeat Zarkon’s armies._

_Also up for debate was whether or not anyone had ever successfully created the stone before. There were records of it existing, but none of it being used, which some took as proof that the so-called records were empty boasting from ancient alchemists seeking notoriety. There were recipes, but none had ever yielded anything magically or alchemically interesting._

_There_ was _one recipe that had never been tried, though. The one Pidge found in an old textbook in their father’s library. The recipe was not unlike others that existed except that instead of ordinary mercury, it instructed alchemists to use something called “sophick mercury.”_

_The book took great pains to describe sophick mercury—its properties and identification, the ways in which it differed from ordinary mercury. The one thing it neglected to include was instructions on how to make it, or where to find it._

_Pidge had brought the problem to Hunk and Lance, and together the three of them had worked it out: the recipe for sophick mercury._

_All they had to do was break into the locked shelf in Master Els’s shop, and they’d be set._

* * *

Allura dropped onto the luxurious bed they’d provided for her in the castle, groaning as she fumbled to kick off her shoes. “My feet,” she said, “are killing me.”

Coran chuckled, coming over with a tray of tea, which Allura took gratefully. They’d arrived at Nocturne City late in the afternoon, and Allura had promptly been swept off for a series of interviews (interrogations, more like.) It seemed no one knew for certain what curse Zarkon’s witch had cast over Terra, or if she would wait for the day of the eclipse to cast the spell, but the prevailing theory was that she planned to do to Nocturne City what she’d done to Altea’s captial.

So of course the scholars were all quite keen to talk to Allura and Coran, the only two eyewitnesses to have escaped Zarkon’s dominion.

Thank the stars for Shiro, who stayed close through it all, occasionally stepping in with a reprimand for a scholar who asked one too many thoughtless questions about _just what_ had _it looked like when all her people died?_

The others who had come to summon her from Talero were all dismissed to spend the evening as they pleased, which meant Allura didn’t even have the option of distracting herself with the puzzle of Lance’s curse. How _had_ he been turned into a cat, and why was he so loathe to talk about it?

“Thank you, Coran,” Allura said, sipping her tea. “I don’t know how I would have survived today without you.”

Coran smiled good-naturedly. “The same way you survive everything life throws at you, your highness. With poise and a little bit of snark.”

Allura laughed, letting the tea warm her, easing the knots of tension that had formed all over. It had been years since she’d had to put on that royal mask—long enough that she’d forgotten how draining it all was.

“Do you suppose they’ll actually figure it out?” she asked, staring into her teacup. “The prophecy?”

Coran sighed, sitting down beside her with his own teacup. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I hope so, but the way these things go? I’m not sure the prophecy _can_ be ‘figured out’ in advance. They’re finicky that way.”

Allura grimaced. “Then… what? We just let it happen however it likes? ‘Life in payment’ and all that?” She shook her head, then set her teacup and saucer down on the nightstand. “I can’t do that, Coran. I can’t let anyone else die.”

Coran’s hand on her arm was sympathetic, but not particularly reassuring. “Sometimes,” he said gently, “you just don’t have a choice.”

* * *

_They did it._

_Sophick mercury. The pivotal ingredient in the creation of the philospher’s stone. Alchemy’s greatest mystery._

_And three apprentices made it in secret with stolen materials._

_Dragon’s bile, magnetite, extract of moonbeams, arsenic, mercury, and obsidian powder. Together nearly a year’s wages, but the end result was quite literally priceless._

_Master Els was furious when he found out. Demanded an explanation, threatened to drag them all to the magisters and have them thrown in jail. So of course Lance had taken all the blame on himself. Better for one of them to suffer than all three._

_He never did figure out how much of Els’s fury had been for the stolen ingredients, and how much for the fact that three teenagers had done what he’d failed to manage in thirty years’ work._

* * *

Lance grew restless as evening approached. He’d been so tired after the long ride back to Nocturne City that he’d gone straight to bed as soon as Shiro told him he was done for the day.

That had been six hours ago, and now that the first aches of the transformation were upon him, he found himself wide awake, prowling the room he shared with Hunk until he honestly thought Hunk might throw a flask at him.

“Maybe you should stay in tonight,” Hunk said, fiddling with a mortar and pestle. Lance wasn’t sure what he was working on, but he doubted any of the ingredients needed to be ground into oblivion. Hunk looked up, ducking his head between his shoulders. “You never know if Haggar’s going to send out more Echoes.”

Lance waved a hand, not slowing in his pacing. “If she did, they’d all be going for Allura.”

“Lance...”

“I know what you’re going to say, Hunk, but come on. The stupid prophecy isn’t talking about me.”

Hunk gave him a _look_ , and Lance groaned.

“Ugh, _fine._ One night.”

Hunk visibly relaxed, and Lance almost felt bad when, two hours later, just after Hunk had begun to snore, he pawed at the window and let himself out.

The night opened up before him, a medley of scents still up in arms with the lingering heat of day. Distant voices and the rustle of nearby rats danced in his ears, which swiveled of their own accord, tracking the source of sounds Lance wouldn’t have even noticed in his human form.

Lance looked back at Hunk’s sleeping form only once before he took of in the direction of grilled meat and burbling voices.

The night market had been one of Lance’s favorite parts of city life even before he became a cat, but now it was so much _more—_ which was saying something. When he first came to Nocturne City from his family’s small farm to study alchemy, he’d been young and scared and too proud to show it. Hunk, generous soul that he was, had brought Lance home on the first day of their apprenticeship for a family dinner that made him a little less homesick. But it was Pidge, with their mischievous smile and a casual offer to show him something fun, that had shattered the last of his reservations.

They’d stayed to the edges of the night market that first day, never straying far from the fiery glow of street lamps. That was the face the night market presented to the waking world—reputable merchants selling baubles and snacks to whoever ventured out after dark, taverns spilling laughter and cloying odors onto the street, and entertainers juggling brightly colored witchlights for a spare coin.

Lance barely gave this face of the night market a passing glance these days. Far more interesting attractions lurked behind a veil of shadows, in close alleys covered over with dingy canvas. Cool light in jeweled greens, haunting violets, and oceanic blues leaked through gaps in the canvas to where Lance perched on the metal railing of a high balcony.

It was busy tonight. Lance supposed it made sense. With the eclipse—and Haggar’s curse—creeping closer, it stood to reason people would want any protection they could get. Even if the night market dealt primarily in wares and services that skirted the edges of legality.

The scent of smoked fish rose above the alley, rousing Lance’s hunger. He leaped from the railing to a wood-slat roof set up over someone’s shop—spell components, at a glance (and a sniff, _yikes._ Human or cat, there was nothing pleasant about the smell of entrails.) From there, Lance found a barrel at a good intermediate height to take him down to street level. He made his way into the crowd, pausing every so often to accept scritches from shop keepers and fortune tellers.

Lance didn’t make it out here every night, and there were two other night markets he also visited, but he’d been here often enough to earn a reputation—and something of a fan club. They knew him as Varius, and Lance could always count on them for a good meal.

Sure enough, when he got to the fishmongers’ stall, where Raul and his husband Peter cooked up their excess stock to sell to the crowd, he barely had to rub against Peter’s leg before the man knelt down with a generous offering of flaky fish. Lance caught it with his claw and ate it before it could touch the ground, purring his thanks.

He hung around the stall for a while, perched on an empty crate and just people-watching. He was well aware that the night market’s patrons considered Varius a harbinger of prosperity—and it was true, after a fashion. People sought him out in a crowd, showering him with attention, and if not everyone bought something from whichever booth, stall, or cart he’d claimed as his own for the night, the sheer numbers that passed by certainly had an effect..

And, hey. That was the least Lance could do, considering he couldn’t _actually_ pay for his own meal.

Eventually, though, Lance grew restless and left the fishmongers behind to explore the rest of the market. Potions glowed eerily, talismans and artifacts gleamed gold and silver in the low light, and an otherworldly mist gathered around the flaps of a fortune teller’s shop.

At the end of the street, Lance spotted a shop he’d never seen before. The crude paper sign out front advertised spells on commission, and the array of components visible behind the counter suggested quite the repertoire.

What caught Lance’s eye, though, was the familiar young man sitting behind the counter, looking pissed off at the world.

_No way,_ Lance thought, winding his way closer.  _Keith’s got a shop in the night market?_

Not many people knew that magic had a scent, but it did. It was something sweet and prickly, the kind of thing that made you feel like you were constantly on the edge of sneezing, and it was thick in the air here in the night market. Most people used magic, even if they didn’t sell it, and Lance was halfway convinced the whole place had an enchantment on it to keep  prudish law-types away.

T he magic in Keith’s shop was different somehow. Wilder. More like pine and sage than fresh-cut  shrubs .

Curious, Lance inched closer, scenting the air, trying to pick out what it was that set Keith’s magic apart. Lance himself had never been much of a sorcerer, for although it was founded on the same basic principles as alchemy and used the same innate magic present in the natural world, there were no clear-cut instructions you could follow. No rules laid out in black-and-white. Sorcery was all about keeping a clear mind and a steady focus and bending the world to your will. It…

Well, it was like Pidge said: if magic was logic, then alchemy was a dissertation, and sorcery was an impressionist painting painted with an unnerving amount of blood.

Keith looked up when Lance was still two stalls over, and Lance froze. He wasn’t sure that he wanted Keith to see him—but neither was he sure that he wanted to hide. Keith scanned the crowd, brow furrowing, and when a customer approached the desk,  Lance took advantage of the distraction to sprint into the shadows behind his shop.

It took a few minutes, but he found a way to a perch almost directly above Keith’s shop, where he could listen in on his conversations with clients. They asked for everything from luck charms to healing to magical repairs for old family heirlooms. Keith provided it all without a single unnecessary word, working swiftly to fetch whatever components he needed, when he needed them. Not everything required a material component, especially when the caster was practiced with a particular vein of magic.

Keith, unlike most sorcerers Lance had known, seemed not to have a specialty. He had more of a scattershot repertoire, and Lance amused himself trying to guess which spells Keith could cast without the aid of components.

Wood smoke and the acrid scent of blood and something soft and floral each rose from the shop in turn, and Lance let himself drowse, listening to Keith work. He never asked much for his services—sometimes only half what others in the market charged—and he never turned down a request, except once when someone asked for a love potion.

“Magic can’t create love,” he’d said softly, a hard edge to his voice. “And nothing good can come from faking it.”

The man who’d made the request pitched a fit after that, and Keith’s cool disinterest quickly evaporated in a blaze of anger that ended with the man leaving in a huff, the tail of his cloak smoldering.

Lance flicked his tail in amusement and climbed down from his perch, making his way around to the front of Keith’s shop.  He hopped up on the counter where a few brittle bones—owl, probably—sat on a braiser full of coals, popping occasionally as cracks appeared.

Funny, Lance had always thought that a form of divination. Had Keith somehow adapted it for sorcery?

“ _You?_ ” Keith asked, his voice pitched high. He sounded incredulous, even a smidgen offended. “ _You’re_ Varius?”

Lance coked his head to the side, then sat down and started washing his face.

Keith kneaded his brow. “ How did you even  _get_ here from  Talero ?” he asked. “Or, well, I guess, how did you get  _there_ if you’re a regular around here? You just roam the countryside? Traveling good luck cat?”

Lance looked up at him, amused. After all the huff and gristle of last night, he wouldn’t have expected this sort of rambling curiosity from Keith—sour-faced though it was. It was kind of adorable, actually. He’d have to tell Hunk that Keith carried on full conversations with stray cats.

“Whatever.” With a sigh, Keith turned and started poking through the shelves full of spell components. “They say you’re good luck, you know. Not sure I believe it, but...” Finding what he was looking for, Keith turned around and unwrapped a paper bundle, revealing small strips of jerky. Keith set it down before Lance, not relaxing until Lance took his first bite.

After a time, Keith’s hand came down on his back, and Lance paused his meal to look up at Keith, who was watching him with something like fear in his eyes. Slowly, he started to stroke Lance’s back, his gaze far-off.

“I could use a little luck,” he admitted.

There was something in the way he said it—the way he looked more vulnerable than he had the entire time he was with Hunk and Pidge—that gave Lance pause, and when he finished the last of the jerky, rather than continue on his midnight wandering, he hopped down onto the wooden bench where Keith sat, curled up against his hip, and let himself drift off  to sleep.


	4. When Night Consumes the Day

“Where the _fuck_ have you been?!”

L ance cocked his head to the side, pausing halfway through the open window. Hunk stood by the door, fully dressed, his hair a windswept mess. Pidge sat cross-legged on the bed, scowling. They locked eyes with Lance for a long moment before Lance—slowly, gracefully—continued his descent. He reached the floor and sat primly, flicking the tip of his tail.

He meowed.

Pidge groaned, flopping backwards. “Right. Still a cat for...” They pulled out a pocket watch and made a disgusted sound. “About two more minutes. Cutting it awfully close, aren’t you?”

Lance gave a dismissive little chirp and went to rub up against Hunk’s legs. Poor guy must have woken up in the middle of the night and freaked when he realized Lance was gone. Lance felt a little bad about that, but mostly he just felt warm and drowsy—he’d dozed most of the night, curled up against Keith’s warmth, only waking when Keith started to pack up shop.

And, okay, so he was a little later than he’d intended. He usually tried to get home before the pain made it hard to move, but he’d  _made_ it. It wasn’t like he’d had to transform in an  _alley_ somewhere.

Hunk sighed and crouched down, scratching Lance under the chin.  _Gods_ , but he knew just how to make all of Lance’s tension melt away. “ You really had me worried, man,” he muttered, picking Lance up and carrying him over to the bed. Pidge shifted, giving them space as the aches ramped up. Any second now…

Lance butted up against Hunk’s hand in apology, feeling his back twitch as his muscles contracted.

“I know,” Hunk said. “It’s just—someone broke into the palace last night.”

Lance looked up sharply, letting out a yowl of surprise as the motion popped something in his spine. Grimacing, Hunk stroked his hand along Lance’s back, murmuring apologies.

“Sorry. Let’s get through the transformation first.”

Lance turned to nip at his thumb—not hard, just enough to catch his attention. Hunk hesitated, glancing at Pidge.

They sighed. “I only just heard about it myself, so I don’t know much. Messenger arrived telling me to get you two and meet Shiro at Allura’s quarters in the palace. I came here and woke Hunk up, and we realized you were gone. That was like… what, ten minutes ago? We were just about to go looking for you.”

Lance’s ears laid back, and he bit down as his jaw shifted to something more human. It felt, for a moment, grossly out of proportion with the rest of his skull, the pressure mounting to a sharp ache in his temples. Then his tail retracted into his spine with a jolt, and he yelped, the sound more human than animal.

“Sorry,” he muttered—still slurred by a tongue that couldn’t quite form the right sounds. He groaned as his limbs reoriented themselves, then turned over and pressed his face into Hunk’s chest, breathing through the last of the change. “Give me thirty seconds and we can go.”

Pidge grunted. “There’s no need to rush.”

Lance turned his head just enough to arch an eyebrow in their direction. “There kinda is, though, isn’t there?”

They flushed and didn’t answer.

Didn’t matter, anyway. Lance’s head was still pounding, his joints still wobbly, but he pulled himself upright on Hunk’s shoulder and  dragged his shoes closer with his toes. “Did Shiro’ s mess e nger say anything else?”

“Just that the guards had already dealt with the intruder. I don’t think he knew yet what the damage was.”

Nodding, Lance knotted his laces, then stood, blowing out a long breath as his knees wobbled. Hunk grabbed his arm to steady him, and Lance nodded his thanks.

“Let’s go.”

* * *

“It was Haggar,” Allura said, running her fingers over the petals of the small glass flower. “Or her Echo, at any rate. I’d know that magic anywhere.”

Shiro paced by the door, his arms crossed over his chest. She’d seen his amputated hand reaching for a weapon more than once, and she suspected he was trying to force himself not to do so again. Coran looked almost as agitated as Shiro, though he remained at Allura’s side, one hand settled on her back. She smiled at him, closing her hand around the flower. It fit neatly into the palm of her hand, the white and pale blue swirls inside reminding her of the juniberries that grew near her father’s palace.

Pidge, who sat on the trunk at the foot of Allura’s bed near Hunk and Lance, pursed their lips. “A gift given,” the muttered, nodding to Allura’s closed fist.

Allura looked away.

“So the prophecy’s really coming true?” Hunk asked.

Lance lifted a shoulder in a shrug. “Means we found the right person, I guess. So that’s… good?”

“And you’re _sure_ you’re all right?” Shiro pressed. It wasn’t the first time he’d asked. He’d come bursting into Allura’s bedchamber hardly five minutes after the first guards arrived in answer to Allura’s shouts, and he’d refused to leave ever since.

“I’m _fine_.” Allura set the flower aside, refusing to look at it,  and turned her attention instead to the mice, who had been trying to console her since the danger had passed. She’d sat with her father in a field of juniberries on the very day Zarkon invaded. It had been their favorite spot to picnic and get away from the pressures of castle life. She wondered if Haggar knew that, or if she just knew that it would remind Allura of her homeland. “The Echo never even attacked. It knocked a vase off the boudoir, and the sound woke me up. As soon as I realized the Echo was there, I attacked it.”

She gestured to the scorch marks on the wall, which skittered outward from the point of impact in zigzagging paths.

“I’m certain I didn’t hit it, but it just dropped this flower on the carpet and vanished. That’s when I called for the guards.”

“But _why?_ ” Pidge asked. “What’s the point of causing such a stir just to deliver a glass flower?”

“Intimidation?” Hunk suggested. “I mean, I’m sure as heck intimidated right now.”

Lance nodded. “And with the eclipse just a few days away, she wants to remind people that ordinary defenses can’t stop her. She can come and go as she pleases and attack whoever  s he wants.  She could have killed Allura in her sleep, and no one would have been able to stop her.”

Allura shuddered, and one of the mice nuzzled against her fingers. There was more truth in Lance’s words than he could possibly know. Altea had had no warning before the witch’s attack. One moment, the war was a hundred miles away. Then there was a storm in the heart of the capital city. Allura could still feel that foreign magic burning beneath her skin, antithesis to the Altean magic that flowed through her own veins. She could still hear her own voice screaming, pleading with her father.

_At least let me try, Father. This may be our only chance!_

Those were the last words she’d spoken before her father cast the sleep spell on her. He’d smiled, pulling her close, and whispered that he loved her. When she’d woken, she was already in that small cottage outside Talero.

Squaring her shoulders, Allura stood, refastened the tie on her dressing gown, and crossed to the desk, two of the mice riding on her shoulders, the others scampering along behind her. She’d been up late last night studying the prophecy, and in the wake of Haggar’s visit that morning, she’d been surprised to find her notes undisturbed.

“Our only option is to figure out this prophecy,” she said. “There _must_ be a clue here somewhere.”

“Right,” Hunk said. “You were gonna talk to the scholars yesterday. Did you figure anything out?”

Allura snorted. “Only that their handle on Ancient Altean is laughable at best.”

Pidge frowned. “Translation errors?”

“I’m not sure yet.” Allura glanced at Coran. He had a far better grasp of the old tongue than Allura, and even he was out of practice. They’d dug up a pair of Ancient Altean dictionaries and a few other texts with well-established translations, but the work was slow going. “Most of the issues seem to be in the first stanza, and I’m not certain how much that’s going to help us. We’ve already established that I’m the Fallen One it refers to.”

There was a conspicuous silence from the foot of the bed, and the mice turned, chittering about secrets. Allura turned, frowning at the three alchemists, who traded guilty looks.

“What aren’t you telling us?” Shiro demanded.

“Nothing important,” Lance said at once, waving his hand. “Allura’s right; the prophecy’s definitely about her.”

“It’s just weirdly applicable to Lance, too,” Hunk muttered.

Lance scowled at him. “Yeah, like  _one line_ .”

Allura looked at Coran, who seemed as intrigued as she was. “Which line?” he asked.

Lance’s head lolled back, and he groaned as Hunk and Pidge watched him expectantly. “Ugh,  _fine_ . The whole  _winter’s mark_ thing.” He pulled up his sleeve, revealing a pattern of pale patches that disappeared up the sleeve, running toward his shoulder.

“Vitiligo,” Allura said.

“Yeah.” Lance yanked his sleeve back down. “It doesn’t exactly scream _winter_ , I know. It’s probably nothing.”

Coran scratched his chin. “I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss it if I were you.” He followed Allura to the desk and snatched up the dictionary that sat open near the inkwell. “The Old Altean word for  _winter_ can also mean  _pale_ or  _white._ Allura’s hair is  _winter’s mark_ by the same logic as your vitiligo.”

Lance tucked his hands into his armpits and hunched his shoulder. “Yeah, but, like, the rest of the prophecy has nothing to do with me.”

“Except maybe the thing about the martyr,” Pidge muttered.

Shiro’s spine straightened. “How so?” he asked, narrowing his eyes.

Lance glared at Pidge. “It’s  _nothing_ . We caused a little trouble a while back and I covered for them. No big deal.”

From the exasperated looks Hunk and Pidge were giving him, it  _was_ , in fact, a big deal. Allura tucked that away for later consideration and turned back to her notes. “I’ll need more time to work on this, and I’m sure you all have better things to do than sit around watching me stare at books all day.”

“Actually, I’d like to stay, if you don’t mind.” Pidge adjusted their spectacles, smiling self-consciously. “I’ve always been fascinated by Old Altean, and I’d love to learn more about it—and help you out, of course! It’s always better to have another perspective in the room, right?”

“Sounds splendid to me!” Coran said, tossing the dictionary to Pidge. “Let’s get cracking.”

“And I’ll be staying too,” Shiro added. “I know you don’t think Haggar will return, but it would put my mind at ease to see for myself.”

Allura shook her head fondly. “All right, then.” She raised an eyebrow at Lance and Hunk. “Don’t tell me  _you’re_ staying, too.”

“Nope.” Lance stood, stretching. “I’ve got _way_ better things to do than smell dusty old parchment all day. Like watch paint dry.”

“We have potions to work on for our apprenticeship,” Hunk said, elbowing Lance in the side. Lance stumbled, pouting at Hunk, who chuckled. “Let us know if you need anything. We’ll be back tomorrow to see how it’s going.”

Allura lifted her hand in farewell, but she’d already turned her attention to the prophecy. She wasn’t sure if it was a poor grasp of the language at work or if the original translators had based their work on unfounded assumptions, but the more she looked, the more discrepancies she found. She just didn’t know if any of it  _mattered._

No. It had to matter. It had to, or else they had nothing else to go on. There were only three more days until the eclipse.

* * *

Pidge arrived at twilight on the evening before the eclipse, a shimmering green potion in hand.

“What’s that?” Lance asked, propping his chin on his arms. He lay on his stomach on the bed, Hunk giving him a massage. It was still half an hour to sundown, but the aches had settled in early tonight.

“New recipe for a pain potion,” Pidge said measuring out a dose in one of the clean vials Hunk kept on the rack beside the window. “It’s safe, but I’m not sure how effective it’ll be.” They corked their flask, then held the vial out to Lance. “But, hey, if it helps even a little, it’s worth it, right?”

Lance stared at them for a long moment, then reluctantly sat up and took the vial. He’d tried a handful of pain potions before, but nothing seemed to affect the pain of transformation. Pidge suspected it was all part of the curse—it interfered with the alchemy of standard pain potions, rendering them useless until the transformation was complete.

Pidge insisted there was a workaround, and they’d spent most of the last year trying to figure out what it was.

Lance sniffed the vial—cinnamon and… what was that, vanilla? He looked pointedly at Hunk. “You helped with this one?”

“Of course I did.” He tapped his index fingers together, not quite meeting Lance’s eyes. “I don’t like watching you suffer, Lance. We’re _going_ to figure this out.”

Lance doubted that, but he appreciated the sentiment and so, raising the vial in salute, the tossed his head back and downed the potion.

I t was sickeningly sweet and just warm enough to turn his stomach, and Lance pressed a hand to his mouth as he forced himself to swallow. Even after the draught was down, he swore he could feel its motion, churning in his stomach like a roiling cauldron, fizzling out through his body and gathering in his fingertips as tiny pockets of electricity.

“Well.” Lance burped, then shuddered as some of the vanilla taste resurfaced. “That was an experience.”

“How are you feeling?” Pidge asked, leaning forward. They were dressed today, as they usually were, in loose slacks and a dark green waistcoat over their shirtsleeves, but they hiked up their pant legs as though they were wearing a dress. “Anything… _strange?_ ”

Lance sniffed the empty vial, then gagged. “A little more queasy than I’d like, given what’s about to happen, but otherwise, nah. Typical magic jittery junk. Hasn’t done anything for the aches yet, but we’ll see how it handles the actual transformation.”

Pidge nodded. They didn’t seem disappointed in Lance’s report, but then, they considered anything valuable data. For all he knew, they were  _hoping_ this trial would fail, because it would somehow confirm whatever theory they were working on.

There was still twenty minutes until sundown, though, so Lance returned to the bed and Hunk started up his massage again, and Lance let himself relax—right up until the first jolt of pain startled him back into his body.

“Yeesh,” he muttered, wrapping his hands around his stomach. “Okay, I know it’s still early, but I’m gonna mark down a tentative _no_ on the potion, Pidge. Sorry.”

They shook their head. “Not your fault, Lance. I’ll just have to try something else.”

He nodded, then bit down on his tongue and let the transformation run its course. Pidge left partway through—say what you would about their borderline-mad-scientist ways; they had a weak stomach for watching other people writhe around in agony. Lance couldn’t blame them, really. He’d almost burst into tears when his little nephew had a bad stomach ache, and he was pretty sure he’d be a wreck if he had to watch Hunk or Pidge go through these transformations every day. Hunk was a saint for sitting through them all with Lance.

_I don’t say thank you enough,_ Lance thought, flipping his tail over his eyes. The transformation was complete, but Pidge’s potion had left him queasier than usual, and he doubted he’d be up for moving anytime soon.

Humming sympathetically, Hunk pulled the goose down comforter out of the chest in the corner and spread it on the bed. It was much too warm for that now, in the hottest part of the summer, but it was plush and soft, and it wrapped around Lance like a hug. He let Hunk settle him into the cushiest lump, and before he knew it he’d drifted off.

* * *

It was late when he next woke, the moon shining bright through the slats of the window. Hunk had passed out on the bed, blanket hugged close to his chest. Lance stood and stretched, watching carefully for any signs that Hunk might be waking up, but he slept on. He’d been pulling long shifts at the castle with Allura and Coran, alternating with Pidge on translation aide duty. Lance joined them occasionally, but mostly he’d been sleeping his days away, then sneaking off after dark to the night market.

If anyone asked, he would have sworn up and down that he wasn’t going for Keith, but… well, Keith was a warm body that didn’t mind a stray cat stealing his heat, and he always had something tasty to eat.

And  he was  shady . Obviously.  He wore a necklace of some kind—a talisman, most likely. He reached up to clutch at the chain every time he cast a spell, and Lance could feel the magic coursing through it.  If not a talisman, then a focus.

And then there was the scar. Lance had only glimpsed it once, but it raised his fur the same way the necklace did—a spiderweb of glistening blue that traced the outline of his collarbone. They converged somewhere on his shoulder, but Lance had never gotten a good look at the epicenter. He wanted to ask Pidge and Hunk if they’d ever heard of something like that, but he knew they’d ask him why he wanted to know, and there was no good way to answer that question.

So he kept coming back, night after night. For curiosity’s sake.

Every other time he’d come to visit Keith this week, he’d made his rounds first, stopping by the weaver’s or the meat pie stand or the cart owned by twins who sold potions and draughts. But he’d slept a good couple hours on the down comforter tonight, and he needed to be back early. He’d managed to return each day before Hunk woke up, but with the eclipse in less than twelve hours, odds were good that Hunk was going to wake up early.

So Lance skipped his usual routine and made a beeline for the quiet spell shop tucked in a lonely corner of the market. Business seemed to have picked up since Lance had made it his home, which Lance might have bragged about if he’d ever  _seen_ Keith outside of the market. They’d run into each other that night in  Talero , and Shiro kept mentioning that he’d spoken with Keith about such-and-such, but the guy was literally never at the palace when Lance was there.  Well, no, they’d crossed paths two nights ago as Lance was rushing out of the palace. He’d lost track of time and barely made it home before transformation hit. Keith had been late to the market that night, and Pidge said he’d spent the early evening arguing with Shiro.

Pidge hadn’t managed to eavesdrop on the conversation.

Keith was here now, though, casting a charm for a crotchety old man with a basket full of dried flowers. Lance waited patiently  for Keith to finish, then sauntered in and hopped up on the bench beside Keith, who looked down at him and smiled. He thanked the customer, then pulled out a strip of steak, which he offered to Lance, and  _damn_ this boy always had the best food. Trying to bribe the local avatar of luck, probably. Lance couldn’t complain.

“All right, all right,” Keith said, his tone lightly amused, as though he and Lance had been bickering over something trivial. “I’ll admit it: you might actually be ask lucky as people say you are.”

Lance’s ears pricked up, and he gave Keith a steady look, tail flicking in satisfaction.

Keith rolled his eyes. “Don’t give me that. I don’t think you’re  _magical_ or anything. You just have this freaky power over the entire night market. People go where you are. That’s its own kind of luck.” He leaned back, smiling at the next customer who came—this one asking for a healing spell for her son. She twisted her apron between her hands, her eyes on the countertop.

“I don’t have much money, I’m afraid,” she admitted, pulling out a pathetic looking purse. The baby in her arms whimpered, and she soothed him, handing the purse over to Keith. He didn’t look inside. “A little more than twelve silver. Please. I’ve tried everything else, and they say you’re the best here with healing magic.”

Keith stood, forcing Lance to shift sideways to keep Keith’s face in view. Lance sat, tail around his paws, and watched as Keith brushed the infant’s fair back from his face.

“Keep your money,” he said softly, turning to his rack of spell components. He selected a few liquids and powders—none of them labeled, of course, so Lance had no clue what they were—and an alabaster bowl. Seeing that the woman was still staring at him in shock, he allowed himself a small smile. “I don’t charge to heal children.” His gaze dropped to the baby, and an odd look came over his face. “Keep loving him. That’s all the payment I need.”

The woman stared, open-mouthed, as Keith cast the spell. Her baby fussed briefly before quieting, and she stared down at him, tears gathering in the corners of her eyes.

Lance’s skin crawled with the casting of the spell, and he flicked one ear, his eyes going to Keith’s face and sticking there. This wasn’t the first time he’d cast a spell for free—not the first time by far if you counted the times he dropped his price or accepted food or homegrown spell components in trade. Parents coming to him for a sick child, or children for an ailing parent, were almost guaranteed to hit Keith’s well-hidden soft spot, and he always looked like it physically hurt him to cast in these instances. Lance hadn’t quite figured out why.

He wasn’t sure it mattered. When the spell was done, and Keith assured the woman her baby would recover, she burst into tears and pulled him into a hug that left him rigid, his hands clutching at her shoulders like he wanted very badly to push her away.

She left eventually, and Keith tugged at the chain around his neck as he sat back down. Lance purred, nudging his other hand, and Keith flushed.

“Don’t go spreading this around, alright?” he muttered. “I’ve still got to make a living.”

_Sure,_ Lance wanted to say.  _It’s_ all _about money with you._

An ear-splitting shriek split the still night air, lighting every nerve in Lance’s body on fire. He was off the bench and burrowing under the tent flap at the back of Keith’s shop before he remembered himself, and when he did he froze, fighting against his feline instincts that told him he needed to be far away from here.

_Stop,_ he told himself, claws digging into the cobbles underneath him.  _Think, Lance. You’ve heard that sound before. Somewhere…_

Talero.

_Oh, no._

That was the scream of an Echo.

_Keith!_

Lance spun back the way he’d come and burst back into the shop, his fur standing on end. His ears pressed against his skull, an uncomfortable reminder of the primal terror coursing through him. The air was thick with magic, scented black with rot that screamed a warning to the cat’s brain.

He held firm. Keith had vanished from the shop, a plain iron dagger in his hand as he charged out into the street and faced off with the Echo. Lance’s back ached where the last creature had grabbed him, and he remembered that cold, a cold so deep it seared his bones.

Keith conjured a shield of flame as the Echo attacked, then flung out his hand and summoned another  to save a pair of customers scrambling for cover behind a cart full of cheap wooden jewelry.

Pressing himself low to the ground, Lance crept out into the open, darting forward a few steps before freezing, his instincts rising in a wave that paralyzed him. Keith spun, reaching into a pouch at his waist. He withdrew a handful of bones, crushed them in his fist, and flung them at the Echo. They hung suspended in the air for a long moment, glistening white in the light of magicked lamps, before a current of magic coursed through them, zipping toward the Echo and wrapping it up in cords of flame.

The creature screamed, then melted to shadow. It streamed toward Keith and reformed inches from his face, swiping with a clawed hand that glowed to Lance’s eyes. He sprinted forward as Keith cried out, tripping over his feet and falling backward onto a pile of ceramic vessels.

The sound of shattering pots grated on Lance’s senses, but he didn’t let it slow him. He sprang forward, sinking his claws into the strange, semi-solid flesh of the Echo’s calf. It was difficult to find purchase, but his momentum carried him upward on tenuous footholds, his claws ripping holes in the creature’s skin as he raced toward its shoulders. Black vapors rose around him, wreathing him in icy shadows.

The thing swung for him, and he leaped free, hissing and spitting as he hit the ground and sprang away. The Echo fired a bolt of ice his way, but he’d already disappeared into the Martins’ stall, using their casks of ale as cover as he circled around.

A wash of red light lit up the night, and Lance poked his head out in time to see Keith conjure another spurt of flames that licked at the Echo’s body. It screamed again, and Keith flinched. His shirt was shredded, thin red lines cutting a path across his chest, and his necklace hung free, the tiny silver star pendant flashing in the light. Keith reached up and closed his fingers around it, then opened his other hand.

A column of fire erupted from the cobblestones, burning the Echo to ash. Its final scream hung in the air for a long moment, then faded to the distant murmur of wind.

Slowly, Keith lowered his hand. He staggered, and a fellow merchant hurried to his side to steady him.

All around, questions burbled out of those who had taken cover in the market.  _What was that?_ they asked.  _What did it want?_

Others closed in around Keith, murmuring about his wounds, but he shook them off and staggered back to his stall, where he searched through his shelves with shaking hands. Lance followed him over, keeping his distance as he watched Keith patch himself up. Bone powder, dried bloodwort leaves, and  soft gray down feathers went into a bowl, mixed with water and what Lance thought was mermaid tears. Keith murmured an incantation over the bowl,  then dipped a ladle into the mixture and swallowed a mouthful,  hissing as the gashes on his chest began to knit together.

Keith released  his pendant when the wounds stopped bleeding, though it left red, scabbed traces behind. He was breathing hard, a sheen of sweat across his brow,  but he still managed to summon a vicious glare for the people gathered around the front of his shop. They looked down, ashamed, and broke away, one by one, until it was just Keith and Lance alone in the tent.

Lance ventured forward, nudging Keith’s hand with his head.

“’m fine,” Keith grunted, forcing himself to his feet. He staggered to the front of the tent and yanked at the tie holding the front open. The fabric dropped to the cobbles, effectively cutting them off from the rest of the market. The whispers continued, and Lance could pick out more than one person speculating about Keith’s well-being, but Keith either couldn’t hear them or didn’t care.

He returned to the bench at the back of the shop and lay down, draping one hand over his eyes and pressing the other to his side, where the Echo’s claws had cut the deepest. His star pendant hung crooked around his neck, trailing sideways so Lance had a clear view of it. It was made of silver, pure and unadorned, and it shone with an enchantment he couldn’t identify.

Had Keith made it himself?

They sat there for a long while, Keith ignoring everything around him, Lance looking on in concern from the opposite end of the bench. Thanks to the cat’s senses, he could detect the low-level sorcery Keith was working, speeding his recovery. He probably shouldn’t be working magic in his state; he seemed exhausted already, and this wasn’t helping any.

When the magic finally ceased, Lance ventured closer, rubbing against the side of Keith’s head. He lifted the hand that had been clutching his side and scratched Lance between the ears. The arm over his eyes didn’t move.

“Are you worried about me?” he asked, a smile in his voice. “Dumb cat. I’ll be fine. Besides, it’ll all be over tomorrow.”

The mournful tone of Keith’s voice gave Lance pause, and he sat down, resolving to keep watch through the night. If anything else attacked right now…

Well, neither Keith nor Lance was likely to be much good in the next fight, but that didn’t mean he had to leave Keith to face it alone. He would stay until Keith was back to his usual self—or at least until dawn, getting back to Hunk early be damned.

As it was, Keith didn’t move again until the aches had begun to set in. Just when Lance was beginning to think he’d have to abandon his watch to get home before the transformation, Keith stirred, groaning as he sat up.  He dropped his head into his hands, breathed deeply, and then stood. It took five minutes to pack away the spell components and talismans lining his shelves. Each had its own little compartment in Keith’s two trunks, which he hauled into a nearby alley. One of the nearby building was a storage locker owned by the famil y  who’d started the night market. Merchants could rent out space within to keep their wares secure during the day.

Keith left the tent itself, as did many of the other merchants. It was a hassle to take them down every day, and the risk of anything happening to them was relatively low. Lance was pretty sure Keith usually took his down and stored it with his components, but he was dragging today, staggering as he struck out away from the market.

Lance glanced at the sky. The stars were beginning to fade with dawn’s approach, and Lance could feel the transformation coming on, but he had a few minutes yet. Time enough to make sure Keith got home in one piece and didn’t pass out in an alley somewhere.

Not giving himself time for second thoughts, Lance chased after Keith, tracking him down alleys toward one of the less reputable sections of the city. Rent was cheap here, but it was risky to wander around alone—especially for someone in Keith’s condition.

Suddenly Keith stumbled, caught himself on the wall, and groaned, turning to sit with his back against a trash bin and his legs stretched out in front of him. He didn’t look like he meant to move anytime soon.

Was something wrong? Why wasn’t he getting up?

Something in Lance’s hip shifted, and he let out a startled hiss that had Keith’s head snapping up.

“Varius?” he asked, frowning deeply. “What’d you follow me for?”

Lance hesitated. The transformation was going to start any minute, but something was definitely wrong. The scent of magic hung thick in the air, wrapping around Keith in currents that made Lance’s fur stand up on end.

Suddenly the air between them  _snapped_ , pulled taut with familiar energy, and before Lance could think  of running for cover he was changing, the transformation hitting him far more quickly than usual. He cried out once, his voice shifting from cat to human mid-yowl.

Then it was done, and Lance pitched forward,  landing face-first on the cobbles.

“What the--? _Lance?!_ ”

Lance looked up, smiling sheepishly at Keith, who looked like he was either going to punch Lance in the face or take off running. “I can explain,” Lance said. He pushed himself upright, hesitated a moment on his heels, then stood. He faltered when Keith didn’t do the same, just stared up at him, his brows drawing together.

“Okay…?” Keith said. “Go ahead?”

Lance opened his mouth, and a year and a half’s worth of story tried to come out at once. He hung his head, sighing. “Okay, maybe I can’t explain. I mean—surprise! I’m half cat! Or, well, I’m a cat half the time. It’s not like one of my parents is a cat, that’d be weird, right? So weird.” He shuddered, shoving the image out of his head. “Is ‘magic’ enough of an explanation for you?”

Keith sat back, wrapping an arm around his midsection again like his wounds had started aching again. “It’s  _an_ explanation, I guess. Was this an accident, or have you always been this way?”

“Uh… neither? Kinda more punishment than anything. Not—not that I’ve done anything _wrong_ , exactly. I mean, sure, I broke a coupla rules and _technically_ you could categorize it as stealing, but I still say I have every right to an education,  screw Els and his massive ego.”

Keith shook his head. “An education? Lance, what--?”

Lance flailed his hands. “Nothing! Forget I said anything! Actually, forget I did anything. Especially forget all that time I cuddled with you. You’re just warm and the cat likes warmth.” He cringed, spinning around so he didn’t have to face Keith’s incredulous stare. “Gods, that sounds so creepy.  _The cat made me do it_ , yeah, well  _you_ don’t have an animal sharing your headspace, so--”

“Lance?”

“I mean, it’s not like I was doing anything _creepy_. I just wanted to watch you work, and you were giving me food, and  where else was I gonna sleep, on the floor? It’s not like I was in your lap or anything— _and_ _you didn’t have to let me cuddle with you_!”

“Lance.”

Lance gripped his head between his hands, tearing at his hair. “Augh! That just makes it sound worse! I get bored, is all. And it’s fun to people watch at the night market. And you happen to be a surprisingly good person to people watch with,  _okay_ ?”

“Lance!”

Lance froze, ice trickling down his spine at Keith’s tone—one part exasperation, one part pained gasp. Lance spun, panic clawing at his throat. “Oh, shit. You’re hurt, aren’t you? Shit! Do you need help? Should I go get Shiro? Was it some kind of curse? I don’t know how to break curses!”

Keith leaned his head back, knocking it against the trash bin behind him. He heaved a sigh, then closed his eyes.

It was odd, watching someone else undergo a transformation. It wasn’t exactly like Lance’s, to be sure—it seemed smoother, and much quicker, even, than the accelerated transformation he’d just experienced. One second he was Keith, fully human and rolling his eyes to high heaven.

Then the black of his hair washed out across his skin, flaking upward like—like feathers.

Lance blinked, and there was a crow sitting in Keith’s place, an iridescent blue  starburst capping his right wing in exactly the place Keith’s scar had been.

“Huh,” Lance said, and dropped into a crouch before the crow. “I was not expecting that.”

The crow turned its head, fixing him with what Lance could have sworn was an exasperated look.

Lance held up his hands. “Okay! So you do know what it’s like to have an animal in your head. Was this a punishment, too, or…?” He trailed off, sighing. “Right. Bird. Can’t talk. Is this an at-will thing, or are you stuck like this for a while?”

Keith fluffed his wings, which Lance took as an indication that he was stuck. He’d have changed back if he could, right?

“Okay.” Lance sat back on his heels, staring up at the sky. The sun had turned the sky a bright, clear blue, only the faintest tinge of orange still clinging to the clouds. Which mean, what? Three hours left until the eclipse began? “So Pidge and Hunk already know about my thing. Also Allura and Coran, because apparently Allura can talk to animals? So if you’re cool with it, I’m sure they wouldn’t make a big deal about you being a crow right now. I dunno about Shiro, but...”

He held out his hand in invitation, and after a moment’s hesitation, Keith stepped up onto it, his talons wrapping tentatively around Lance’s fingers. Their grip tightened as Lance lifted him up, and he flapped his wings frantically, squawking a protest.

“Sorry!” Lance cried, trying not to jostle him too much as he put his hand beside his shoulder and let Keith transfer over to the (comparatively) stable perch. “So. To the castle?” He glanced at Keith, who nipped lightly at his ear. “Ow. Got it. Let’s go.”


	5. Life in Payment

Pidge was going to murder someone. Preferably Haggar, and preferably before she destroyed Nocturne City, but at this point they weren’t too picky. Lance had gone out last night, because of course he had; he was exactly that much of a thick-skulled, restless thrill-seeker. Probably hadn’t been able to sleep with all the excitement about the eclipse, got bored, and wandered out for some distractions.

He still hadn’t returned.

Pidge told themself he’d be fine—he’d damn well _better_ be fine, after all the effort Pidge and Hunk had put into keeping him that way. But there was no time to worry about that now. Shiro would be waiting for them at the palace, and Lance knew it. Wherever he’d found to ride out the transformation, he’d probably head straight for the palace.

Once Pidge convinced Hunk of this, they set out for the rendezvous point at the gates of the Summer Castle, breath catching in their throat as the gates came into view. The gates, and Shiro standing there alone, his fingers digging into his hair.

“Thank the gods,” he breathed, catching sight of them. “I was starting to get worried. Where’s Lance?”

“He’s not here yet?” Hunk asked. His hands had come up to clutch at the clasp of his cloak, and he shot an accusatory look Pidge’s way.

“He left early this morning,” Pidge said, forcing their voice to remain steady as both Hunk and Shiro stared them down. “We assumed it was just nerves and that he was already here. What about Keith and Allura?”

Shiro glanced toward the tiled roofs of the Summer Palace, grimacing. “Keith is… checking on something for me. We shouldn’t wait for him. I’m not sure about the princess.”

Pidge wrinkled their nose. “And the kingdom’s counting on us?” they drawled. “I feel sorry for them.”

With a sigh, Shiro flicked them a look that said, _Not now, Pidge, please,_ and they relented, crossing their arms and drumming their fingers on their sleeves. Shiro kept looking toward the palace for Allura, Hunk scanned the streets for Lance, and Pidge slumped against the wall between them, staring at the floor.

Their eyes darted upward, toward the glare in the east where the sun tested the limits of the skyline. A few more minutes and the light would spill over the city. Pidge ran through the timeline in their head for about the fiftieth time this week. Sunrise at quarter to six—about forty-five minutes ago, now. The partial eclipse would begin around eight, with totality an hour later, lasting for five minutes or less. Then another hour until the end of the eclipse.

Haggar could strike at any point in that two hour window, thought the scholars all contended that the prophecy likely corresponded to the peak of the eclipse. Pidge could get behind that logic, except that it was Haggar, ultimately, who was raining destruction on all their heads, and nothing was stopping her from unleashing her magic right now.

The three of them waited, in sharp-edged silence, for another five minutes before Shiro’s arms dropped to his sides. He huffed out a breath, then turned fully toward the palace. “I’m going to go make sure everything’s all right. Wait here.”

Pidge glanced at Hunk as Shiro started walking. Hunk looked every bit as restless and curious as Pidge, and the two of them were barely two steps behind Shiro as he started up the flagstone walk toward the palace. He glanced over his shoulder as they caught up, one eyebrow quirking higher.

“What?” Pidge asked innocently. “I’m not a soldier, Shiro; you can’t order me around.”

Shiro’s eyes fluttered closed for a moment, and then he turned to Hunk, who tapped his fingers together and slid his gaze to the manicured topiaries flanking the path. “I’m nervous, okay? I just want to be doing something.”

“You and me both,” Shiro admitted. “Fine. Just let me tell the gatekeeper to send Lance and Keith through if they show up.”

It took seconds to pass the message along, and then they were on their way, their collective anxiety pushing them near to a sprint. Pidge, for one, would have gladly run all the way to Allura’s quarters, but Shiro clamped down on their shoulder three times when they began to pull too far ahead, and Pidge resigned themself to a more civilized pace.

“You sure nothing happened to her?” Pidge asked, keeping their voice low enough so as not to alarm Hunk, who was already jumping at shadows. “Haggar’s gone after her twice already.”

“Yes, and she hasn’t actually done any damage to the princess, despite having the perfect opportunity last time she was here.” Shiro shook his head. “She’s _fine_. Probably just… stayed up too late last night studying the prophecy and overslept.”

Pidge gave him a flat look. “Her _and_ Coran?”

“You never know.”

Pidge sighed, but they’d already reached the Summer Castle’s entrance hall, and from there it was a quick jaunt up the stairs and down the corridor into the north wing. Allura and Coran were the only guests staying in this wing right now, though the east wing was full to the brim of visiting scholars working on the prophecy. The corridors were eerily quiet as they progressed, and despite all Shiro’s calming words, Pidge felt their tension rise as they drew nearer the unmarked door to Allura’s chambers.

Shiro put on a burst of speed at the last minute, smoothly passing Pidge and knocking before they could throw the door wide and barge in on the snoozing princess. The rap of Shiro’s knuckles on the wood hung heavy in the silence for five interminable seconds.

Then the door swung wide, a frazzled Coran leaning around it. His eyes went wide as he caught sight of their guests, and he fumbled at his waist for his watch, muttering under his breath.

“Quiznak! Is it that time already?”

“Getting close to seven,” Shiro said brightly. He kept all but a sliver of tension out of his voice, and Pidge would give him credit for the attempt. “A little more than an hour until the eclipse starts. Everything all right in here?”

“Ah...” Coran glanced over his shoulder, cringing as Allura let out a strangled scream, and laughed. “It’s been a long night. Princess?”

Allura’s moans cut off, and chair legs scraped abruptly across stone. “Oh! Oh, no! What time is it?”

“Almost seven.” Shiro seemed to have found his stride again, and that stride was ‘calming down frazzled companions.’ He held his hands up in a placating gesture and entered the room as Coran stepped aside. Pidge followed and caught sight of Allura, dressed in silk pyjamas and a pink dressing gown, her hair a tempest. She stood rigid by the desk, crumpling several sheets of parchment in her hands. “You’re fine, princess. Keith and Lance are running a little late, as well.”

Allura had just begun to relax at Shiro’s sedate tone, but she jolted upright once more, her eyes going wide. “Keith and Lance? _Both_ of them?”

“Well, I mean...” Hunk scratched his cheek, politely avoiding looking at Allura. “Not like _both_ as in they’re chasing down a lead together. Shiro sent Keith on an errand, and Lance… Actually, I’m not exactly sure where Lance is.”

Nostrils flaring, Allura tossed the parchment back onto the desk. “Well, then, we have to find him,” she said with a nod. She turned on her heel and stalked toward the adjoining dressing chamber. Shiro and Hunk both turned crimson when, a moment later, Allura’s dressing gown came fluttering out through the open door, followed shortly by her pyjamas. Coran, unfazed, gathered up the discarded clothes and began to fold them.

Pidge took a seat on the edge of the desk.

“Okay, now, I’m not saying I’m exactly _opposed_ to the idea of tracking down Lance,” they said, raising their voice just enough for it to carry into the dressing chamber. “It’s probably not a _great_ idea for any of us to be out there alone today, but, uh… why is it so important?”

“The prophecy,” Allura said shortly.

Pidge waited for more, and when it didn’t come, they glanced to Coran. “The prophecy.”

Coran nodded. “We were up late working on the translation. We think we might have hit on something.”

“Really?” Hunk asked, a smile tugging at the worry-lines around his mouth. “You think it will help us stop Haggar?”

“I can’t say for sure.” Allura reappeared from the other room, dressed now in fitted trousers, sturdy boots, a shirt whose collar rose nearly to her chin, and a coat so enveloping it could practically be called a dress in its own right. “In any case, we’d best be speaking with Keith and Lance both before we go jumping to any conclusions. I’d like to see if my theory holds water before we go trusting our lives to it.”

She stopped by the bed, snatching up the glass flower that lay on the pillow. She stared at it, reaching down absently to let the mice scurry up her arm and settle on her shoulders.

Shaking herself, she turned to Shiro. “Where did you say you sent Keith?”

“…I didn’t.”

Allura’s eyebrows inched toward her hairline. “You _do_ know where he is, though?”

Shiro’s jaw slid to the side, and he stared at the mantelpiece. “I have a pretty good guess.”

Pidge snuck a glance at the others, all of whom looked as perplexed as Pidge—and nearly as suspicious. Pidge wasn’t sure how many times Keith had come to see Allura in the last few days, but they’d only run into him for five minutes here and there as they passed in the halls.

They were beginning to think they should have been asking a lot more questions.

“Shiro...”

Shiro tensed, his shoulders inching toward his ears, and he opened his mouth to answer—but before he began, there came a knock at the door. Shiro’s relief was palpable as he spun and threw the door wide. The servant on the other side jumped, clutching at his neck, and stumbled back from Shiro’s imposing figure.

“Yes?” Shiro asked.

The servant gathered himself, cleared his throat, and sketched a bow first at Shiro and then at Allura, who stepped up beside him a moment later.

“You pardon, sir, Highness,” the servant muttered. “I was told to request your presence at the gates. It seems there’s been some commotion.”

Pidge could see the questions gathering in the pinch of Shiro’s brow, but he didn’t ask them, just nodded to the servant, glanced at Allura, then led the way out of the room. Allura grabbed a staff leaning against the wall by the desk, Coran a short sword hidden in the trunk, and both followed Shiro from the room.

Pidge looked at Hunk. “I’ll bet you two silver weights this has something to do with Lance,” they said with a grin.

Hunk crossed his arms. “What? No way, come on. What kind of a scene could Lance possibly cause out there? I’ll bet it’s Keith. Did you see Shiro’s face? That’s the face of a man who’s been through this before. Shiro probably had him tailing one of Haggar’s minions or something. Ooh! Maybe he turned up at the gates with a dead body.”

“I’ll take that bet,” Pidge said, holding out their hand for Hunk to shake. He just stared at it, and then at them. He left without responding, and Pidge gave chase, protesting all the while.

Shiro, Allura, and Coran were already nearly to the entrance hall by this time, and Pidge had to run to catch up, their shorter legs taking three steps for every two of Hunk’s. They careened around the curve of the grand staircase, clutching at the banister to keep from taking a tumble, and ignored the exasperated look Shiro lobbed their way.

At the bottom of the stairs, Pidge hardly slowed, just led the way out into the brightening light—the sun well above the horizon now, with the moon looming ominously nearby. Pidge glanced down at their watch, though it cost them some speed. Forty-five minutes to the start of the eclipse. Gods above, but Lance was cutting it close.

It _was_ Lance at the gate, one hand raised in a peace-making gesture to the large crow perched on his shoulder. Pidge whooped in delight, elbowed Hunk in the side, and waved their hand over their head.

“Lance!” they shouted. “Where have you been?”

“And what’s with the bird?” Hunk added.

Lance’s eyes flickered to the side as the crow shuffled its feet, cocking its head to stare at them all. “Uh… Heh. Funny story. See—ow!” Lance jumped as the bird nipped at his finger, which still hovered in the vicinity of its head, like Lance was trying to figure out how to pet it. Lance stuck his finger in his mouth and glared at the bird, then sighed. “Maybe we should take this inside.”

Shiro’s steps had slowed some distance back, his gaze locked on the bird, and he shook his head now, seemingly confused. “Sorry, _what_?” His brow furrowed, and he turned to the gatekeeper. “What happened?”

Lance huffed. “No need to sound so fatalistic, Shiro, jeez. But _s_ _omeone_ decided he didn’t want to stay with the nice gatekeeper.” His eyes slid sideways, and the crow flapped its wings once, almost casually, smacking Lance in the face. “Hey!”

“Your pardon, uh, milady,” the gatekeeper said with an awkward bow for Allura. “The King doesn’t want any strangers on palace grounds today, not even familiars.”

“He’s not my familiar,” Lance said, raising one finger toward the guard as he used the other hand to tease the crow’s wing out of his face. “Just an unfortunate hitchhiker.”

Allura glanced at Shiro, whose gaze had returned to Lance and the crow, his eyes darkening with unreadable thoughts. “We don’t have to talk here,” Allura said slowly, clearly waiting for Shiro to jump in with his opinion. When he remained silent, his lips slightly parted like he wanted to ask a question but couldn’t quite pin down _how_ , Allura sighed and squared her shoulders. “Does someone know of somewhere quiet we can go for a chat?”

“My place isn’t far,” Pidge said. “And I know all the places to go to get away from the staff.” Their grin only widened as Hunk and Shiro gave them knowing looks. Lance, they were sure, would have joined in if he wasn’t still fighting with his bird. He paused his battle just long enough to flash Pidge a thumbs up.

“Lead away, fair gentlelady! Me and the future pillow-stuffer are right behind you.”

* * *

Shiro kept shooting Keith odd looks on the walk to Holt Manor, which wasn’t surprising. Keith tended to avoid human contact while in his crow form, and that he’d appeared at the castle on Lance’s shoulder was even more of a puzzle. Keith would have happily explained, had he retained use of his tongue.

Unfortunately, speech was far beyond his grasp for the next twelve hours, which meant he was going to have to rely on Lance to outline the situation. Not exactly ideal.

Still, he had to admit Lance made a decent perch, when he wasn’t flailing his hands all over the place like he _wanted_ to knock Keith flat on his beak. It was better than that rickety old cart, that was for sure.

Lady Holt intercepted them in the entrance hall, fussing over Pidge and Shiro, extending a (slightly flustered) welcome to Allura, smiling warmly at Hunk and Lance. From the gentle chiding, she knew them both quite well, and it took a painful few minutes to extricate themselves from the small talk and offers of help.

Eventually, though, Pidge had them all ferreted away in what they called the Tower. Keith wasn’t sure the name fit exactly, but the structure might have been intended as some sort of lookout originally: a small block of rooms that rose two floors above the rest of the manor. The top room, where they settled in, was round and low-ceilinged, with narrow windows all around to let in a breeze. It was chilly up here—even Keith could feel it, and his feathers kept out most weather.

“Sorry it’s not exactly the lap of luxury,” Pidge said, dragging out some frayed blankets and lumpy cushions. Allura sat primly on a stone bench along one wall, and Shiro took up post by the stairs, his eyes still focused on Keith, who flew clumsily from Lance’s shoulder to the windowsill as Lance flopped down on the floor beside Hunk and Pidge. “At least it’s private?”

“Good enough for me,” Shiro said. “Lance, how…?” He trailed off, and Lance tipped his head back, grinning impishly.

“How did I find out Keith is a bird sometimes?”

“He _what?_ ” Pidge squawked, whipping around so fast they ripped the blanket off Hunk’s lap. He hardly seemed to notice, as he was too busy gaping at Keith.

“Keith? Is that you, buddy?”

Keith fluffed his feathers and gave Lance as heated a glare as he could manage in his current state. Lance just leaned back on his hands, smiling smugly.

Shiro sighed, pressing a hand to his forehead. “Keith, are you… Are you okay with this?”

 _I have a choice?_ Keith thought, wishing very much he could roll his eyes. Instead, he just caught Shiro’s eye and bobbed his head.

“Fascinating,” Allura muttered. Keith turned to her, suspicious.

“Can you understand him, too, then?” Lance asked, leaning forward, his hands flat against the floor between his legs. “Cause that’d sure make things easier.”

Shiro began to turn toward Allura, only to suddenly change course and frown at Lance. “Too?”

“Uh, yeah.” Lance scratched his cheek, flashing a lopsided smile. “I guess you’re the only one who doesn’t know at this point, but I’m a cat! Only at night, but… yeah. Surprise?”

Keith basked in the glow of Shiro’s utter shock, laughter escaping as a single, rasping call. Shiro snapped his mouth shut and glared at him. “A _cat_?” Shiro asked, sounding tired.

Lance nodded. “The one who came with you guys out to Allura’s cottage? Yeah… Curses are a real headache sometimes. Every time the sun goes down, there goes Lance...” He laughed weakly, and Pidge rolled their eyes.

“That’s what we were talking about before, by the way,” they said to Allura. “The martyr thing? Hunk, Lance, and I pissed off our old alchemy master, but Lance took the fall for us. That’s why he got cursed and now spends half his time as a little ball of claws and attitude.”

“Hey now, be fair. I’ve got the attitude all the time.”

Keith cawed, and Lance shot him a suspicious look.

“So what’s Keith’s story?” Hunk asked. “He piss someone off, too?”

 _Please,_ Keith thought. _I know how to mind my own business, unlike_ some _people._

Allura raised a hand to her mouth, laughing softly, and Keith turned back toward her. Right. Lance had said something about her understanding animals.

_You can hear me?_

“I can,” Allura said. “Hear him,” she added for the others’ benefit. “A talent I inherited from my mother. Would you like me to translate for you?”

_That… that would actually be nice, yeah._

“Very well. Whenever you’re ready.”

Keith took a moment to breathe, searching back through his past for the best place to start. _I’ve been like this for as long as I can remember,_ he said, and Allura relayed it to the others. _Human at night, a crow during the day. My mother left behind a talisman and a note that claimed it was some kind of protection. I don’t know what for, or how being a bird is supposed to help, but as far as I know, she placed this spell on me when I was still a baby. Maybe the day I was born._

Keith no longer had his mother’s note, but he’d read it often enough in the orphanage where he grew up to memorize every line, so he knew—all her talk of destiny and grand designs reeked of prophecy.

_There’s not much to say. Sometimes I’m a bird. That’s hardly strange, for this group._

“He’s got a point there,” Hunk said, spreading a hand in a gesture that encompassed Keith, Lance, and the sun outside, which was creeping ever closer to the eclipse. The moon nearly touched the edge of the sun now, close enough that Keith couldn’t judge the sliver of remaining space without blinding himself. What did that mean—five minutes? Ten? His pulse, naturally quicker in his crow form than his human, ticked faster still inside him, racing him toward the inevitable.

“So… now what?” Lance asked.

“Allura said she’d figured something out about the prophecy,” Pidge said. “Right? We were just waiting on Lance and Keith.”

Allura glanced at Coran and smiled. “As a matter of fact, yes. I think we may have made a very important discovery. Keith.” She fixed him with a hard look. That mark on your shoulder. How did you get it?”

Keith’s wing tingled, and he resisted the urge to flap it. _It’s a scar,_ he said. _A couple of years ago, I got into a fight with a guy wielding an enchanted blade._

“Enchanted how?”

_Ice magic. Why--?_

“Winter’s mark.” Allura smiled. “Lance and I have a metaphorical mark of winter, but I think with you, we can be a bit more literal.”

Keith’s blood ran cold and he shifted on the stone windowsill, fighting his urge to escape into open air. _You’re not seriously suggesting--_

“Unwanted protection from death preserves it,” Pidge quoted, their voice soft. “I—I guess that could just as easily apply to the spell Keith’s mom cast on him as your dad saving you.”

Allura tipped her head to the side. “Perhaps. Though I have a minor quibble with the translation on that line, as well. I’m more interested in the talisman she left you. Is that the necklace you’re always wearing? I caught a glimpse of it the night we first met. A ‘chained star.’”

“Chained?” Shiro frowned. “I thought the line was _captive_ star.”

Coran chuckled, stroking his mustache. “A clumsy translation, that. There are quite a few errors in the translation, in fact.”

“Mostly, as far as our concerns go, in the first stanza,” Allura said. “The original translation points to me as the so-called Fallen Star, yes? What if we were wrong in that assumption?”

Keith’s heart was pounding harder than ever, his breath coming in short, frantic gasps. He’d known—he’d _known_ from the first time he heard the prophecy, that it was talking about him. It tugged at him in a way nothing but his mother’s note had ever done before. But he’d hoped--

“So what’s the correct translation?” Pidge asked, leaning forward. “You think it could give us an edge?”

“I don’t know,” Allura admitted. “I suppose we’ll find out.” She cleared her throat and began to recite. “ _The Fallen--_ ”

She made it no further than that. Keith felt the instant the eclipse began, a hush falling over the city and a frigid bite creeping into the wind. It ruffled Keith’s feathers, reaching down to his skin, to his bones, and leaving him trembling.

 _**People of Terra,** _ a voice whispered, carried as if on the wind itself and seeping into Keith’s thoughts like creeping fog. _**The hour of your doom is upon you. Deliver the Fallen to me, or I will raze this city as I razed Altea before it.** _

Keith turned, feeling the tug of prophecy in his bones.

 _Life in payment,_ Keith recited to himself. _Life in bounty._

A sharp intake of air behind him. “Keith,” Allura breathed, blankets falling away as she surged to her feet. “Whatever you’re thinking, don’t. Please—you don’t--”

 _You’re right,_ he said, glancing once over his shoulder. _I knew it all along. I just didn’t want to accept it. I’m the life that has to be given in payment. That’s why my mother went to such lengths to keep me alive._ He cocked his head to the side, smiling to himself. _It’s okay. I know what I have to do._

He turned before she could relay his words to the other, spread his wings, and pitched out into the open air, Allura’s scream of, _“No!_ ” ringing out after him as he fell. His wings caught the air with a painful wrench, and he cried, his voice shrill and despairing.

Somewhere out there, Haggar was waiting for him. Somewhere out there, his destiny lay in wait.


	6. She Who Stole the Day

“Keith! No!”

Allura lunged for the window, her heart in her throat as Keith’s wings caught the air. He wobbled, stabilized, and glided out over the city, rapidly loosing altitude. The air had a disorienting shimmer to it, part magic and part the peculiar light of the sun, only just beginning to dip behind the moon, and it made everything feel unreal.

Cursing, Allura pounded her fist on the windowsill.

“Hold on, explain something to me.” Pidge stood up, shucking off their blankets as they inched toward Allura. “Are you saying we were all wrong? _Keith’s_ the Fallen Star?”

“No way,” said Hunk. “No way! The prophecy fit Allura so well.”

Shiro sighed, the sound heavy. So he had known, or at least suspected. “It fits Keith, too. Pieces of it, anyway. He—growing up, he had his wings clipped. He’s taught himself to fly, but he’s not very good at it. He used to say the people who clipped his wings stole the sky from him.”

Lance exhaled, the sound like a punctured ball deflating. “Seriously? But—Altea--”

“Was always a bit of a stretch,” Allura said. “As, I believe, it is a stretch to call Keith a fugitive. Oh, you can make the case,” Allura said, waving her hand as Shiro began to protest. “But it’s strained. It always will be, but you can convince yourself that it works because you think it has to.”

Pidge watched her intently. “What do you mean?” they asked. “What did you find?”

“A mistranslation,” Allura said. “Several, actually, but the one in the first line is significant in that it colors the interpretation of everything that follows.”

“It’s usually translated as _The Fallen One_ ,” Coran said. “A more accurate translation would be simply, _The Fallen._ ”

Lance shook his head. “What difference does it make? Fallen, Fallen One, Fallen Star—it’s just a name, isn’t it?”

Allura smiled thinly. “You misunderstand. The original prophecy never specifies a number. The fist stanza should read,

“The Fallen arise:  
The one with the chained star who yearns for the heavens from which they were stolen  
The one preserved with unwelcome protection that comes from death  
The one who protects willingly at their own expense  
With summer’s soul and winter’s mark, they wait:  
A fugitive, a cast-off, and a survivor, in harmony.  
The twilight, the day, and the night, as one.”

Lance’s face drained of color. “Then—all three of us?”

Allura nodded. “It will take all of us to stop Haggar. I have something I want to try, and I’m going to need help to get the incantation ready before it’s too late. But you, Lance—you need to find Keith and keep him from getting himself killed.”

“Yeah,” Lance said. He licked his lips, nodded once, then disappeared down the stairs without another word.

Allura turned back to the others. “All right. Let’s get started.”

* * *

_There was a peculiar magic in the orphanage air at night. A hush fell over the building, watery light leaked through the shutters. It made the small rooms and drafty halls feel larger somehow, more alien. There might be monsters lurking just out of sight—but there might be secrets there, too, just waiting for someone to claim them._

_Keith should have been asleep. That was what the adults told him: the night was for sleeping, the night was dangerous. It didn’t matter that Keith was only really himself after dark, or that there was very little for a crow who couldn’t fly to do except sleep. Every night after he transformed, Keith was bundled off to bed with an admonition to be brave, stay strong, and last another day. The magisters of the city were still looking into a cure for his curse. Surely tomorrow they would find the answer._

_Ten years had passed since his mother left him on the orphanage steps, wrapped in a blanket, with a small cloth package wrapped in string beside him. Inside were three things: a silver chain with a simple star pendant that glowed with magical light, a binding spell that burned to ash as soon as the package was opened, and a short hand-written note._

_Or so the story went._

_Keith knew it was true because he’d had the pendant for as long as he could remember. He never took it off, not even to sleep. It felt as though it held a piece of his mother—a piece that wanted to protect him, for the necklace sometimes roused to Keith’s thoughts and cast spells he hadn’t learned._

_But he had never seen the note that had been left with him, nor heard what it said. He’d contemplated searching for it many times over the years, but he hadn’t worked up the courage. It was dangerous, sneaking around the orphanage during the day. One of the sisters was always about, ready with a ruler to crack across wandering hands._

_Keith’s punishments always seemed worse than the other children’s, if only because of the anticipation. The sisters were worried about disciplining the crow, which was far more frail than the boy. They might have risked it, except that his injuries carried over. Once, when he’d fallen from the top of the stairs, thinking the added height might help him fly, he’d broken a wing. The fact that it carried across the transformation was a blessing in the end, for the doctor knew how to set a broken arm better than a broken wing, but he’d been laid up in bed, day and night, for weeks._

_Punishments that waited for sundown were only half the reason Keith had never gone looking for his mother’s last goodbye. The crow was a poor choice for searching—unable to reach high cabinets or shelves where the note might be hidden, too clumsy to shuffle through stacks of paper without shredding them._

_At night, though—At night, the sisters were all asleep, no one there to catch him snooping. At night, he was human, and far better suited to this search._

_He’d been working himself up to this for months now, first training himself to sleep during the day so he had the night to himself. Next, he learned the house from basement to roof—where the floor creaked, where doors groaned into the night. He memorized the sisters’ schedules and who slept where, and perfected his lies for when he was caught. He sat in the foyer, more often than not, a lamp burning on the table beside him, and read spell books and fae tales and listened to the sounds of people who, like him, came to life at night._

_Tonight, finally, he was ready to search._

_It took hours, tearing apart first the records room in the basement, then the office on the ground floor where occasionally a generous couple would come to interview one of the children they wanted to adopt._

_(Keith had never been in the office before, and found it disappointingly bare, but he searched it anyway because he needed to be sure.)_

_When he’d searched everywhere he could think of, Keith finally turned his attention to the sisters’ rooms. The head sister had a private study attached to her bedroom, and though the desktop was always clear, there were drawers and cupboards and a trunk under the window, any of which might contain his mother’s note._

_He found it in the top drawer on the right hand side of the desk, hidden beneath a bottle of ink, a pair of shears, and a piece of cloth woven with a ward for a peaceful mind._

_Keith pulled out the old, rumpled page and smoothed it on the desktop. He glanced over his shoulder to the dark doorway that led to the head sister’s bedroom, angled himself away from the opening, then pulled out his mother’s pendant._

“ _I need light,” he whispered, clutching the star pendant in the palm of his hand._

_Almost at once, the pendant began to glow with a soft blue light that leaked between his fingers and spilled across the page like ocean waves._

This is my son, Keith.

I’ve struggled long and hard with this decision, finding every reason to keep him home with me, but I can no longer deny the truth. My son is not safe with me. He is destined for great things, and a great evil seeks to snuff him out before his time.

You will have noticed I included a spell with this note, and if you have already brought my son into your orphanage, then it has already burned itself into these walls. It will keep him safe—keep you all safe. I have taken steps to ensure he cannot be found. He will think it a curse, I know, but it will hide him until the right moment. If he asks, tell him this: the night will hide him. The night is his own. It is only during the day that he might be recognized, and so I have given him a mask.

Keep him safe. Tell him I love him, and that my love burns in the pendant I have left for him. It will aid him when the fight is upon him.

* * *

The fight.

Keith had lived nearly a decade with his mother’s words hanging over his head. A great destiny, a fight so important his mother had protected him three times over to make sure he survived long enough to see it through.

Was today the fight that his mother had been preparing him for? Was Haggar the evil that sought to snuff him out? Keith didn’t see how it could be possible—the Galra Empire had only been a whisper on the opposite side of the continent when Keith was born, and the prophecy about him hadn’t been spoken until much more recently than that.

And yet Keith felt it in his bones. The prophecy spoke of him; he’d known that since Shiro first recited it to him, however much he’d tried to fight it. Haggar had sent an Echo to kill him in the night market. She might have been the one behind the attack that had given him his scar.

And no one could be unlucky enough to be made a plaything of fate twice in one lifetime, could they?

Keith pushed down his doubts and flew, his muscles burning as he clawed for every foot of altitude. He circled the city, searching for signs of Haggar. Time and time again he had to set down on a rooftop to catch his breath, but each time he forced himself to keep moving. Time was running out. It was difficult to track time out here above the city streets, but the shadows grew longer, the otherworldly aura thickening in the air as the moon inched its way across the sun.

How much longer? Keith squinted upward, but the sun was still impossibly bright, and he had to look away. It could have been five minutes from the totality, or it might have been fifteen.

But it was close, and Keith was still no closer to finding Haggar.

 _You wanted me,_ he screamed inside his head, though he doubted anyone in the city but Allura would have understood. His whole body ached, the eclipse spinning his thoughts and circles and making his skin crawl. _You wanted them to deliver me to you. So where_ are _you?_

“Keith!”

The shout drifted up to him on currents of air, and he tilted his head, scanning the streets until he spotted Lance, wrapped in a cloak, the hood streaming behind him as he ran. Crowds had gathered in the streets, some watching the sky, some huddled close together and glancing around as though Haggar might appear on any street corner.

Lance shoved through it all, his head tipped back. He saw Keith, and Keith saw him, and the magic in the air rose to a fever pitch.

Keith’s vision whited out for an instant, a rush of pain and confusion overwhelming him. He lost track of himself for only a moment, but when his mind cleared, he was falling, his stomach in his throat. He opened his eyes just in time to see gray flagstones rushing up to meet him.

* * *

_Lance hadn't had to think about taking the fall for his friends. They’d all still been kneeling on the floor of Master Els’s shop, staring in awe at the silvery-blue liquid beading the inside of their cauldron._

_Sophick mercury. The stuff of legends._

_Then Els had stormed in, eyes blazing as he took in the scene, from the stolen ingredients to the glimmering mercury to Pidge and Hunk, who cowered and cast about for an excuse._

“ _It was my idea,” Lance said, rising in one smooth motion. Behind him, Hunk and Pidge gave twin cries of dismay. Ahead, Els narrowed his eyes._

“ _You expect me to believe you came up with this recipe?_ You? _”_

_The words stung, but Lance held his ground. “We were talking about it the other day—just as a thought exercise. Pidge and Hunk wanted to bring it to you, but I knew you had all the ingredients we would need. So I stole them, and I started mixing. They were just trying to keep me from poisoning myself.”_

_Els snorted, but didn’t contradict Lance. That was closer to his expectation, after all. Lance was the charity case, the hopeless pupil, and the other two carried his weight._

_Fine. Lance would be that person if it kept his friends safe from Els’s temper._

“ _Why?” Els asked. “Why make it yourself? Why not come to me?”_

_Lance did hesitate then, common sense telling him not to provoke. But there was still that lingering light of suspicion in Els’s eye, and if Lance didn’t ground all his wrath on one single target, they might all end up pariahs, never again to apprentice under a master alchemist._

“ _Because,” Lance said, his voice clear and steady. “You’re a greedy, egotistical bastard, and if we’d come to you, you’d have taken all the credit for yourself. At least this way--”_

_Lance never got the chance to finish. Els’s face contorted into a storm of fury, and he spun, yanking out a desk drawer so hard it came off its tracks and upended itself, quills and lead weights and forceps spilling across the floor, sparkling in the midday sun._

_Els snatched up a potion bottle from among the mess. He spun, murder in his eyes, and Lance finally quailed, raising his hands to shield his face as Els flung the bottle at him. It shattered at his feet, drops of searing hot liquid seeping through the hem of his pants, acrid purple smoke rising around him as Els recited an incantation._

_The curse settled around him like a second skin, uncomfortably tight and stifling, and Lance trembled before the satisfaction in Els’s eyes._

* * *

After a year of transforming every dusk and every dawn, Lance was used to the pull of his curse. The way things stretched before it began, until he felt that any step might snap the bones in his legs. The way his vision stood on end and his lungs pulled tight in his chest.

He wasn’t expecting to feel that discomfort settle over him as he ran through the streets of Nocturne City in pursuit of Keith, the light of the sun waning overhead.

 _Don’t turn into a cat,_ he ordered himself. Begged himself. He had no more control over his transformations than he did over the eclipse itself, but he begged whatever fates or powers were at work here that he not spend this fight as a cat. He was useless against Haggar as a cat.

The transformation didn’t come, but the pain lingered, plaguing every step until he finally caught sight of a crow flying drunkenly between rooftops.

“Keith!” he cried. Then, louder, “ _Keith!_ ”

People around him turned to stare, but Lance ignored them, clutching at his cloak’s clasp and shoving his way forward. The crow overhead slowed for a moment. Hopefully that meant Keith had heard him.

Lance’s pain crested, and he stumbled, gasping for air. He swore, but it was the short, startled cry that snapped his head up just in time to see the crow falter, pitch forward, and drop from the sky, rippling as it did so.

_No._

Lance broke into a sprint, shouting aloud as each step brought new agony to his aching legs. He shoved people aside as he ran for where Keith had fallen—just on the other side of this block. There was a small courtyard there, fenced off so the people who lived there could hang up their laundry to dry without worrying about thieves.

Lance leaped, fingers catching the top of the fence. He floundered for a moment, and then his feet found purchase on the wooden boards and he scrambled up and over. A single lantern hung from a hook near one of the doors that opened onto the courtyard, and it cast a feeble yellow light over the area.

Keith lay unmoving near the far edge of the courtyard, fully human, one arm twisted beneath him. A smear of red marked the stones beneath him, and for one horrifying moment, Lance’s heart stopped.

“No,” he hissed, weaving on his feet. How far had he fallen? He’d already been struggling—barely clearing the rooftops. The fall couldn’t have been more than thirty feet, and he’d still been bird for some of that. Surely he’d slowed himself enough to—Surely he wasn’t--

Lance staggered backwards a single step, caught himself, and threw himself forward, shouting Keith’s name as he sprinted across the courtyard and dropped to his knees beside him.

“Come on, Keith,” he muttered, reaching out one shaking hand toward Keith’s neck to search for a pulse. “Come on, asshole, you’re not allowed to die on me.”

Keith groaned, shying away from Lance’s touch, and Lance went boneless, folding over beside Keith, his face pressed to the cool stones beneath him.

“Lance…?” Keith muttered. “What happened?”

“You fell,” Lance said. “Turned human again—I think it has something to do with the eclipse. Are you okay?”

Keith started to sit up, then hissed in pain and fell back to the ground, cradling his left arm against his chest. Lance took one look at the unnatural angle of the elbow and turned away, fighting not to be sick. Keith reached for his collar with his uninjured arm and tugged his necklace free, wrapping his fingers around the pendant.

He breathed out, the sound steadying as the scrapes on his hands and his face knit back together. “I’ll be fine,” he said. “Can you help me with my arm?”

Lance stared at him in horror. “Help how, exactly?”

“I think my elbow is dislocated,” Keith said, gritting his teeth. “I need you to grab my arm—one hand at the wrist, one just below the elbow. Then pull.”

Lance’s eyes darted to the elbow, and his stomach turned over. The last thing he wanted to do was touch Keith’s arm, but they didn’t have the time to go for help, and Keith would only be more vulnerable with his arm like this.

Swearing, he grabbed the arm where Keith directed him to, screwed his eyes shut, and began pulling—gently at first, then with more force as Keith yelled at him to _pull_. Keith pulled back with equal force, his good hand on his bicep—maybe to guide the bone back into place, maybe just to distract from the pain.

He screamed once, and then the arm jumped under Lance’s hand. Queasy, Lance let go, then swore.

“Sorry! Sorry, is that--?”

“Fine,” Keith gasped. He clutched the arm against his stomach and curled around it, breathing noisily through his nose. “That’s what’s supposed to happen.”

“Shit, man,” Lance muttered, running his hands briskly up and down his arms. “How many times have you done that before?”

Keith looked up, his hair hanging over his face. He smiled feebly. “A few.”

Shuddering, Lance shook his head. Not thinking about it. He was _not_ thinking about that unnatural twist, the way the joint had popped back into place.

“Gods damn it, Keith. I need to take a breather.”

Suddenly the courtyard plunged into darkness, the sky above changing swiftly from the deep blue of twilight to true darkness. The lantern at the edge of the courtyard extinguished itself, leaving them only the light of the eclipse—like that of a full moon—to see by.

Laughter seeped out of the darkness, dripping down Lance’s spine like ice.

 _**I’ve found you, little Star,** _ Haggar’s voice whispered. _**You did an admirable job of hiding from me all these years, but that ends today.** _

_**It’s time to end this.** _

* * *

_It was twilight when Altea fell._

_Allura stood on a balcony overlooking her city, frozen in horror as bolts of lightning burned away the gathering dark. She couldn’t hear her people screaming, but she could feel them, a thousand silent voices tugging at her heart._

“ _We must stop her,” Allura whispered, her eyes not leaving the city as her father stepped up behind her. Haggar’s challenge had gone out just moments earlier: let Altea’s rulers face her if they dared, or she would continue to slaughter innocents._

_Plans spun out in the air before her—spells she’d learned from her father, older, more innate magic she’d inherited from her mother. She was no match for Haggar in direct combat. Not alone. With her father at her side, perhaps they stood a chance._

_But Allura had no intention of risking everything on a contest of skill against Zarkon’s most powerful sorcerer. She had a more efficient plan in mind—one that hinged on her mother’s magic. If Alfor’s magic was sunlight, Haggar’s born of shadows, then Allura’s mother’s magic was the twilight that bridged the gap. It was balance._

_This was the magic of connections._

_Alfor’s hand came down on Allura’s shoulder, a heavy weight that pinned her in place. “Allura.”_

“ _At least let me try, Father. This may be our only chance!” She turned, ready to lay out her plan—a sacrifice, but one that was well worth the cost. But as she turned, the world swayed, the twilight thickening to true dark._

“ _I’m sorry, Allura,” Alfor murmured, his arms encircling her as her legs gave out. “I love you. Be safe.”_

* * *

It took time—far more time than Allura would have liked—but eventually the spell was ready to cast. The eclipse had reached its peak, Nocturne City wreathed in darkness, and Allura knelt before a small pyre. Pidge and Shiro had sprinted across the city and back, bringing bone powder and lindswort and carefully cut crystals to focus Allura’s power. Hunk and Coran brewed a potion at Allura’s direction—the same potion she’d spent the last several years turning over in her head, wondering whether her plan might have worked, after all.

And somewhere out there, Lance and Keith might well be facing down Haggar herself. Allura hoped they were together, at least. She hoped they were still alive.

 _I’m not too late,_ she told herself, feeding lindswort into the flames. _I can’t be too late._

The smoke billowed up around her, going straight to her head and making the scan light dim until she could see nothing but the flames before her.

“What’s next?” Pidge asked.

Allura couldn’t see them in the darkness, her vision hazy as it was, but she sensed them. They were restless and anxious, hovering near enough that Allura could feel the crackling energy of their life ghosting across her skin.

“Nothing,” Allura said. “We’re ready.” She turned, trying to approximate Pidge’s location. “Thank you for your help. All of you. If this works, it’s because of you.”

“Allura...” Coran’s hand found her back, and Allura leaned into his touch. “Are you sure about this?”

Allura smiled, holding her head high. “I’ve never been more certain of anything.”

“Wait.” That was Shiro, holding himself to the edges of the room, well clear of Allura’s spell. “You still haven’t said what this spell is supposed to do. You said it might stop Haggar, but… how?”

Hunk shuffled forward then, placing a warm goblet in Allura’s hands. She took it gratefully, curling her hands around the gentle warmth. She lifted the goblet, downing its contents in a single gulp, and set it aside. At once, she felt her mother’s magic stir, pulsing through her with a drowsy sort of warmth. Her mind quested outward, pricking up here and there where magic was being worked.

“I’m going to create a bridge between myself and Haggar,” Allura said as she began to lose touch with her body. She was aware of Coran’s arms around her, keeping her from toppling into the fire, but she couldn’t feel his arms. “Then I’m going to strip us both of our magic.”

* * *

Keith flung himself to the side as a bolt of lightning struck the ground where he’d been crouched. His body ached, arm screaming with every movement. It was a miracle he hadn’t broken anything in his fall, but the injuries he had were enough to slow him. And in this fight, he couldn’t afford to be slow.

Lance appeared behind Haggar, throwing a fist-sized stone at the back of her head. The only magic he knew was alchemy, which didn’t lend itself to duels, but he had flawless aim, and Haggar’s next bolt of lightning fizzled before it reached the ground. She spun, casting this time at Lance, who dove for cover.

Keith didn’t let her momentary distraction pass. He grasped his mother’s pendant so tightly his fingers ached and poured everything he had into a dagger of flame, white hot and so compact it seemed almost to have solid form. His hopes that a concentrated attack might pierce her defenses were dashed when Haggar batted the flames away as easily as she’d done with everything else Keith conjured.

 _There’s got to be some trick,_ Keith thought, scrambling backward as Haggar sent wave after wave of magic his way. There was a stitch in his side and a mounting pressure inside his skull that throbbed with every flash of light. He just didn’t understand. His mother’s note had said her pendant would help him, but even with it, everything Keith mustered might as well have been a summer’s breeze.

He had to be missing something.

“Enough of this farce,” Haggar snarled. She curled her hand, and Keith sprang back, squinting against the flash of light he knew was coming.

Except no lightning answered Haggar’s call. Instead, the flagstones of the courtyard, already mangled by their battle, rose up around his feet and then hardened, trapping him in place.

“Keith!”

Keith’s eyes darted to Lance, who remained halfway behind a scorched tree, fear in his eyes. Haggar raised a hand in his direction without looking and Keith pulled so hard on his pendant the chain snapped.

Currents of magic caught it, whipping it about his knuckles as he shaped his flames into a shield around Lance. Flame was not an inherently defensive element, and the spell resisted Keith’s shaping—but it obeyed, holding its shape as Haggar’s lightning crashed down upon it. Lance cried out, ducking away as the two magics swirled together in a miasma of negative light.

Maintaining the shield too so much of Keith’s concentration that he failed to notice the flick of Haggar’s wrist that sent more lightning his way, not as a bolt this time, but as a net that wrapped around him, sunk into him.

He writhed, losing all sense of the world around him. When he came to, he was on his hands and knees, his feet still encased in stone, his hand still clenched around his pendant. Raw red burns ran out across his hand and up his arm.

Gritting his teeth, Keith tried to stand, tried to at least lift his head and meet Haggar’s eyes as she finished him, but his body wasn’t listening to him. His ears were ringing, a sound like a typhoon raging inside his skull.

“You have what you wanted, Haggar,” he said. “Just kill me and be done with it.”

“Done?” Haggar laughed. “I’m nowhere near done with this kingdom. I’m going to kill you, and then I’m going to crush this city into the ground.”

Keith’s head snapped up, his vision swimming as the motion set the world on an axis. “What? But you said—”

Haggar closed the distance between them in a blink, her hand reaching out to cup his chin. She wore her nails long, and they pricked at his skin as she tilted his head back, forcing him to meet her dark eyes. A spark of golden light burned behind her pupils.

“Don’t get me wrong, boy. I’m going to enjoy watching you die, but that’s… shall we say a personal fantasy.”

Keith jerked away from her baring his teeth. “Why, because I’m the Fallen Star?”

“No,” Haggar said, grinning a horrible grin. “Because I want to see your mother’s face when I bring her your heart.”

Keith stopped breathing.

“What?” he whispered.

His mother… Haggar _knew_ his mother? How? _Why?_ A thousand questions crowded his mind. He’d never known his mother, never even seen her face. He knew her name only because she’d signed the note she left with him on the orphanage doorstep. It didn’t seem fair that Haggar should get to know her when he never had.

“How?” he demanded, shock devolving into rage. “How do you know her? What have you done with her?”

Haggar’s grin widened. “I haven’t done anything with her. She was a student of mine, many years ago. Everything she knows, she learned from me—including that curse she cast on you. She must have known it would make it more difficult for me to find you. Not that it mattered in the end.”

“You…?” Keith shook his head. “Why would my mother have studied under you?”

“She had talent. I like to seek out the most promising of our children, to train up those who are of use to me.”

“My mother isn’t Galra,” Keith seethed. “She’s Terran! _I’m_ Terran!”

“Are you?”

Keith was breathing heavily now, his heart heavy in his chest. He wanted to scream his defiance. He wanted to call Haggar a liar and rip that smirk off her face—but he _didn’t_ know his mother was Terran. He didn’t know anything about her.

Keith sank back on his heels, feeling suddenly drained. His body had begun to ache again. Not just the ache of injury, but the pull of the transformation. The totality was nearly over. Keith would transform back into a crow, if Haggar hadn’t already killed him, and then he would be truly helpless.

Haggar breathed out a thin, cold laugh. “She wanted to hide you from me. She knew I saw your potential, and so she ran. I found her, but I never could track you down—and your mother never gave up your location. She’s been strong all these years for your sake. I can only imagine what it will do to her to know it was all for nothing.”

Magic gathered in the palm of Haggar’s hand, fragments of lightning snapping at the air around her, and Keith stared up at it, numb. So this was the end. He was dead in a few minutes, even if he managed to fend off this attack. Haggar would kill him, one way or another.

But perhaps he could make his death count.

Gathering his magic in his mother’s pendant, Keith reached down and touched the shackles of stone rooting him in place. Haggar’s attention was on her new attack, leaving this spell vulnerable, and Keith shattered the stone with a silent spell.

He stood, already conjuring another dagger of flame, this one centered on his hand. Haggar might be able to deflect the magic, but maybe, just maybe, his body’s momentum would carry him through.

Keith growled, kicking up pebbles as he sprinted forward, holding himself low to the ground. Haggar’s eyes narrowed, and the spell in her hand flared brighter, gathering power. With that sort of strength, she would spear him through. He would die—but he would take Haggar with him.

“ _No!_ ”

Lance appeared from nowhere, tackling Keith and carrying him out of the path of Haggar’s spell. Keith screamed as he landed on his injured arm, skidding across rough flagstones until he came to a stop near the wall of a small house, Lance atop him.

He wasn’t moving.

“Lance?” Keith whispered, horrified. He smelled charred flesh and blood and recoiled, rolling over and trying his hardest not to jostle Lance as he laid him down, reaching one hand up to touch his face—pale and far too still. “ _Lance?_ ”

Lance didn’t answer, but Haggar laughed, her feet crunching on the broken stone.

“The martyr,” she said, her voice a sickly semblance of sympathy. “How utterly predictable. I wonder what it is about you that makes people destroy themselves for you? Gods know I can’t see what drives them to it.”

Keith rounded on her, flames springing up once more in his fist. “Shut up!” he roared, already charging. Haggar grinned, the spark in her eyes blazing bright for an instant as she gathered more lightning between her palms.

In the next heartbeat, the light—and the lightning—winked out.

Haggar’s disdain turned to terror, and she took half a step back, staring at her hands in horror. Keith didn’t slow as he crashed into her, driving his flames straight through her heart.

The flames faded. Haggar collapsed. There was no fanfare, no last, desperate flare of magic. Just a soft, shuddering breath, and then total silence.

Keith stared down at Haggar’s body for a long moment, numb. He felt no satisfaction for her death, no guilt, no joy. It was over. That was all. He stared to delay the inevitable.

Then the light began to return, a subtle shift as blue bled back into the sky. Keith’s transformation tugged at him, making everything momentarily fuzzy. _No time to be afraid,_ he told himself, and turned toward Lance.

Everything felt heavy as he walked the short distance across the courtyard and dropped to his knees beside Lance. The ethereal light of the waning eclipse cast odd shadows on Lance’s face.

His body was still warm.

Keith drew in a shuddering breath, fighting back tears, and bowed over Lance, pressing his face into Lance’s chest. He stayed there, trembling, unsure if that was the grief or the impending transformation.

Fingers ghosted along Keith’s arm, and he froze, staring at Lance’s chest—a chest that rose and fell with slow, shallow breaths.

For a moment, Keith forgot to breath, and he turned to find Lance watching him, a faint smile on his face.

“Hey,” Lance said.

Keith’s tears spilled over, and he sat back, drawing back his arm and hitting Lance’s shoulder. “Asshole!” he shouted. “I thought you were dead!”

“Ow.” Lance pouted up at him, rubbing his arm. “Is that any way to thank me?”

“For what, _dying_?”

“Saving your life,” Lance shot back. He sat up, swayed, and Keith reached out to steady him before he could think better of it. Lance smiled. “Besides, I’m not _dead_.”

Keith’s fingers found a hole in the back of Lance’s coat and the shirt underneath. Lance’s skin was warm, almost feverishly so, but there was no wound. No blood or scar or ruined flesh, and Lance didn’t cry out in pain at the touch.

“How are you alive?”

Lance’s smile faltered, and he sagged against Keith’s shoulder. “Hell if I know. Maybe the prophecy saved me?”

“How? The prophecy was about me.”

Lance made an offended noise and reached up a meandering hand to poke Keith’s nose. “Not true. The prophecy was about all three of us—you, me, _and_ Allura. Night, day, and twilight. Which you’d have known if you’d stuck around instead of running off to get yourself killed.” Lance dropped his finger to Keith’s lips, pressing him into silence as he started to defend himself. “Hang on. If I’m the day and you’re the night… does that make this the part where we get married?”

Keith stared down at him, dumbfounded, until a toothy grin slipped past Lance's solemn facade.

“You’re hopeless,” Keith said with a shake of his head. But he leaned forward anyway and pressed his lips to Lance’s.

The kiss didn’t last long before the transformation claimed Keith. Lance gathered him up in his arms, and they began the long, slow walk back to Holt Manor.

* * *

What followed was twenty-four hours of chaos. By sundown, the entire city had heard the story of the Fallen—two boys cursed to spend half their life as animals and a young woman who had given up her magic to stop the witch who had destroyed her home. (The story was incomplete, of course—Keith heard no whispers of his mother being Galra; of Lance’s curse being sanctioned by the Crown, if only after the fact; or that the magic Allura had inherited from her mother, which let her speak to animals, among other things, remained intact.)

They had to wait for dark to heal Keith’s injuries, as no one knew how healing spells affected magical animals, but that was just as well. Keith spent the day sleeping, and while he was being healed he contemplated what he would ask for as a boon. They were all supposed to get them, though Hunk, Pidge, Shiro, and Coran would probably only get gold or rank. The three heroes of prophecy would be afforded a little bit more.

When Shiro had approached Keith about the prophecy, he’d obviously expected Keith to help in hopes of having his curse undone as a reward. Keith had never been convinced that it _could_ be undone, and the fact that it was Galra magic that had done it only made him less optimistic.

Besides, he had other priorities now.

“Haggar was holding my mother,” Keith said, head bowed as he addressed the king. Allura had already asked her boon—a promise that Terra would make every effort to free Altea from Zarkon’s control. Keith’s hands shook as much from shame as from the impending transformation. Sunrise was only a few minutes away, and Lance had just entered the room, still pale from his own ordeal. “I don’t know where, or how heavily guarded she is… I intend to find her, but I need information. Anything you can dig up—anything at all.”

The king nodded, his expression uncomfortably sympathetic. “I’ll see what we can do.”

“Right. Uh. Thanks.” Keith bowed awkwardly, glanced to Shiro for a sign, then ducked out of the throne room and found a quiet room in which to transform. It was no longer a secret, but he couldn’t help it. He didn’t want people to watch his transformation—especially not strangers.

It was only a few minutes until the others joined them, Lance humming as he led the group, the others all watching him like they were waiting for something.

 _So what did he ask for?_ Keith asked Allura. _Did he have them undo his curse?_

Allura looked at Keith, then at Lance. “No. Actually… he only asked for a minor change.”

“For now,” Lance said, hopping up onto a table pushed against the room’s back wall. “Like I said. I’ll get my curse removed when Keith does.”

Keith cocked his head to the side, studying Lance. _You didn’t have to do that._

Lance waved his hand as Allura translated. “The transformation doesn’t hurt as much when I’m close to you, and the only other thing that was a big deal was being alone. Now we’ve got Allura to talk to us, and...” He shrugged, ears turning pink. “I dunno. I figured it would be a little easier on the both of us if we could share it.”

“He asked them to make it so he’s a cat during the day,” Hunk said, and Keith swore his heart stopped.

Lance scratched the back of his head. “The royal sorcerers still have to work out the details. They said it might take a couple days, so… there’s still time to ask for something else if you’d rather have your little birdie alone time.”

 _No,_ Keith said at once. He looked at Allura. _Tell him thanks for me?_

Lance, of course, only brushed off the praise. “The thing I don’t get is how Haggar’s spell didn’t hurt me. Like… I should’ve been burned or something, right? What?”

He said this last part to Pidge, who had developed a sudden fascination with the ceiling. Beside them, Hunk was nearly as bad, twiddling his thumbs and staring at Pidge like he expected them to answer. When they took too long to find the words, Hunk immediately caved.

“Okay, so don’t get mad, but we might have kind of secretly dosed you with an invulnerability potion.” Hunk raised his hands as Lance floundered at him. “You can’t get mad at us, Lance! We saved your life.”

Lance’s mouth snapped shut, and he breathed in once, visibly letting out his indignation. “Okay, number one, why? Number two, _when_?”

“Couple days ago,” said Pidge, scuffing their foot along the floor. “The ‘pain potion.’ Yeah… it was never going to help with the pain.”

“And we did it because we knew something like this would happen,” Hunk added. “Or, well, we were afraid it would. Look, we all knew you stood a good chance of being the martyr from the prophecy. We just wanted to make sure you didn’t… you know...”

Shiro arched an eyebrow in Keith’s direction. “I mean… they’re not wrong.”

Lance sighed. “Yeah, I guess. Is this permanent?”

“I’m not sure,” Pidge admitted. “We didn’t have time to test the formula. It’s _safe,_ ” they added pointedly. “I just don’t know if it’s going to wear off, or when.”

“That’s no an invitation to test it,” Allura added, crossing her arms. She frowned at Lance, then at Keith. “You’re both safe. Let’s try to keep it that way.”

"Yeah, okay.”

_No promises._

* * *

Lance and Keith raced each other across the city. There was a certain magic to it—not the magic Lance had come to know during his restless nights, but magic just the same. It was the murmur of voices that followed him everywhere, even as he slipped through cracks and made his way to the rooftops and kept always out of sight of the ordinary humans around him. It was the hush of wind that brought the scents of spices and spells, the sun’s warmth seeping into his fur.

It was the shadow overhead, pausing occasionally on peaks and gables to wait as Lance found a safe way across or around obstacles in his path.

Keith took flight again as Lance caught up. He’d been getting better over the last several weeks, thanks in part to Allura acting as a go-between with some helpful birds who gave him a couple of pointers. He still couldn’t fly far without resting, but his confidence was outpaced only by his ambition, and Lance occasionally had to look away as Keith tried some new stunt that might easily have ended with a broken neck.

They came to familiar streets as the sun neared the horizon, turning Nocturne City the cozy silver of twilight. Keith tucked his wings and dropped toward the street, then spread them, flapping to shed momentum. He swooped cleanly through an open window, and Lance followed a moment later, tackling him off the desk where he’d perched.

They transformed as they fell, rolling together and coming to a stop at Allura’s feet.

Lance smiled up at her, locking his arms around Keith’s waist as he tried to wriggle free. “Hey, princess. Miss us?”

“Not in the slightest,” Allura said primly. But she had tea and chocolates waiting on the table in the next room over, lamps spilling their golden light over the sea of papers and maps the three of them had been gathering since the eclipse. It was autumn now, the weather turning chill, and Lance was glad for the tea’s warmth.

“Are we ready, then?” he asked, eyeing the three bags stacked neatly along the wall. A thrill shot through him—part anticipation, part fear. Normal people didn’t decide to sneak into the heart of the Galra Empire armed with nothing but a talisman, a pharmacy’s worth of potions, and a slew of rumors.

Then again, normal people didn’t have prophecies told about them.

Allura grabbed one of the bags and tossed it over her shoulder. The mice emerged from within, taking up their familiar perches at her collar. “As ready as we’ll ever be.”

Keith stared at the largest map on the table at the center of the room. There were three pins stuck into it—the three places they stood the best chance of finding his mother. Lance inched closer to him, slipping an arm around his waist.

“We’ll find her,” Lance whispered. He pressed a kiss to the side of Keith’s head and was rewarded with a soft smile. “I promise.”

Keith breathed in, then let it out slowly. “I know we will.” He nodded to Allura, squeezed Lance’s hand, then grabbed his bag and tossed the last to Lance. “Last chance to back out.”

“Not gonna happen,” Lance said.

“Never,” said Allura.

They headed out together into the twilight.


End file.
